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OUR HUNDRED DAYS 
IN EUROPE 



BY y 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMfeS 





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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1887 



Copyright, 1887, 
By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

All rights reserved. 






The Riverside Press, Cambridge •• 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



Co 
MY DAUGHTER AMELIA, 

(Mrs. turner SARGENT), 

MY FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COMPANION, 

THIS OUTLINE OF OUR SUMMER EXCURSION 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



♦ 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY. 
A Prospective Visit ] 

OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 
I. 

The Voyage. — Liverpool. — Chester. — London. — 
Epsom 13 

II. 

Epsom. — London. — Windsor 57 

in. 

London. — Isle of Wight. — Cambridge. — Oxford. 
— York. — Edinburgh 99 

IV. 

Stratford-on-Avon. — Great Malvern. — Tewkes- 
bury. — Bath. — Salisbury. — Stonehenge . . 138 

V. 

Stonehenge. — Salisbury. — Old Sarum. — Bemer- 
TON. — Brighton 173 

VI. 
London 207 



iv CONTENTS. 



VII. 



Boulogne. — Paris. — London. — LiVERPOOii. — The 
Homeward Passage 246 

VIII. 

General Impressions. — Miscellaneous Observa- 
tions 279 



INTRODUCTORY. 

A PKOSPECTIVE VISIT. 



After an interval of more than fifty years 
I propose taking a second look at some parts of 
Europe. It is a Rip Van Winkle experiment 
which I am promising myself. The changes 
wrought by half a century in the countries I 
visited amount almost to a transformation. I 
left the England of William the Fourth, of the 
Duke of Wellington, of Sir Robert Peel ; the 
France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal Soult, of 
Thiers, of Guizot. I went from Manchester to 
Liverpool by the new railroad, the only one I 
saw in Europe. I looked upon England from 
the box of a stage-coach, upon France from the 
coupe of a diligence, upon Italy from the cush- 
ion of a carrozza. The broken windows of 
Apsley House were still boarded up when I was 
in London. The asphalt pavement was not laid 



2 INTRODUCTORY. 

in Paris. The Obelisk of Luxor was lying in 
its great boat in tlio Seine, as I remember it. 
I dill not see it ereeteil ; it must have been an 
exciting scene to witness, the engineer standing 
underneath, so as to be crushed by the great 
stone if it disgraced him by falling in the pro- 
cess. As for the dynasties which have overlaid 
each other like Dr. Schliemann's Trojan cities, 
there is no need of moralizing over a history 
which instead of Finis is constantly ending with 
What next? 

With regard to the changes in the general 
conditions of society and the advance in human 
knowledge, think for one moment what lifty 
years have done I I have often imagined my- 
self escorting some wise man of the past to our 
Saturday Club, where we often have distin- 
guished strangers as our guests. Suppose there 
sat by me, I will not say Sir Isaac Newton, for he 
has been too long away from us, but that other 
great man, whom Professor Tyndall names as 
next to him in intellectual stature, as he passes 
along the line of master minds of his country, 
from the days of Newton to our own, — Dr. 
Thomas Young, who died in 1829. Would he 



A PROSPECTIVE VISIT. 3 

or I bo tlio listener, if we were side by side? 
However liuiuble I iniglit feel in sneli a pre- 
sence, I should be ho ebid in tlie grandeur of 
the new discoveries, inventions, ideas, 1 had to 
impart to him that I should seem to myself 
like the ambassador of an Emperor. I should 
tell him of the ocean steamers, the railroads 
that s])read themselves like cobwebs over the 
civilized and half-civilized poitions of the earth, 
the telegraph and the telephone, the photogra])h 
and the spectroscope. I sliould hand him a 
paper with the morning news from Ijondon to 
read by the electric light, I should startle him 
with a friction match, 1 should amaze him with 
the incredible truths about anaisthesia, I should 
astonish him with the later conclusions of 
geology, I should dazzle him by the fully devel- 
oped law of the correlation of forces, I should 
delight him with the cell-doctrine, I should con- 
found him with the revolutionary apocalypse of 
Darwinism. All this change in tluj aspects, 
position, beliefs, of humanity since the time of 
Dr. Young's death, the date of my own gradua- 
tion from colh^gc ! 

I ought to consider myself highly favored to 



4 INTRODUCTORY. 

liave lived through such a half century. But it 
seems to me that in walking the streets of Lon- 
don and Paris I shall revert to my student days, 
and appear to myself like a relic of a former 
generation. Those who have been born into the 
inheritance of the new civilization feel very dif- 
ferently about it from those who have lived their 
way into it. To the young and those approach- 
ing middle age all these innovations in life and 
thought are as natural, a3 much a matter of 
course, as the air they breathe ; they form a part 
of the inner framework of their intelligence, 
about which their mental life is organized. To 
men and women of more than threescore and 
ten they are external accretions, like the shell of 
a moUusk, the jointed plates of an articulate. 
This must be remembered in reading anything 
written by those who knew the century in its 
teens ; it is not likely to be forgotten, for the 
fact betrays itself in all the writer's thoughts 
and expressions. 

The story of my first visit to Europe is briefly 
this : my object was to study the medical pro- 
fession, chiefly in Paris, and I was in Europe 
about two years and a half, from April, 1833, to 



A PROSPECTIVE VISIT. 5 

October, 1835. I sailed in the packet ship Phil- 
adelphia from New York for Portsmouth, where 
we arrived after a passage of twenty-four days. 
A week was spent in visiting Southampton, 
Salisbury, Stonehenge, Wilton, and the Isle of 
Wight. I then crossed the Channel to Havre, 
from which I went to Paris. In the spring and 
summer of 1834 I made my principal visit to 
England and Scotland. There were other ex- 
cursions to the Rhine and to Holland, to Swit- 
zerland and to Italy, but of these I need say 
nothing here. I returned in the packet ship 
Utica, sailing from Havre, and reaching New 
York after a passage of forty-two days. 

A few notes from my recollections will serve 
to recall the period of my first visit to Europe, 
and form a natural introduction to the experi- 
ences of my second. I take those circumstances 
which happen to suggest themselves. 

After a short excursion to Strasbourg, down 
the Rhine, and through Holland, a small steamer 
took us from Rotterdam across the Channel, and 
we found ourselves in the British capital. 

The great sight in London is — London. No 
man understands himself as an infinitesimal 



6 INTRODUCTORY. 

until lie has been a drop in that ocean, a grain 
of sand on that sea-margin, a mote in its sun- 
beam, or the fog or smoke which stands for it ; 
in plainer phrase, a unit among its millions. 

I had two letters to persons in England : one 
to kind and worthy Mr. Petty Vaughan, who 
asked me to dinner ; one to pleasant Mr. Wil- 
liam Clift, conservator of the Ilunterian Mu- 
seum, who asked me to tea. 

To Westminster Abbdy. What a pity it 
could not borrow from Paris the towers of Notre 
Dame ! But the glory of its interior made up 
for this shortcoming. Among the monuments, 
one to Rear Admiral Charles Holmes, a hand- 
some young man, standing by a cannon. He 
accompanied Wolfe in his expedition which re- 
sulted in the capture of Quebec. Dryden has 
immortalized him, in the " Annus Mirabilis," as 

" the Achates of the general's fight." 

My relative, I will take it for granted, as I find 
him in Westminster Abbey. Blood is thicker 
than water, — and warmer than marble, I said 
to myself, as I laid my hand on the cold stone 
image of the once famous Admiral. 

To the Tower, to see the lions, — of all sorts. 



A PROSPECTIVE VISIT. 7 

There I found a " poor relation," wlio made my 
acquaintance without introduction. A large 
baboon, or ape, — some creature of that family, 
— was sitting at the open door of his cage, when 
I gave him offence by approaching too near and 
inspecting him too narrowly. He made a spring 
at me, and if the keeper had not pulled me 
back would have treated me unhandsomely, 
like a quadrumanous rough, as he was. lie suc- 
ceeded in stripping my waistcoat of its buttons, 
as one would strip a pea-pod of its peas. 

To Vauxhall Gardens. All Americans went 
there in those days, as they go to Madame Tus- 
saud's in these times. There were fireworks and 
an exhibition of polar scenery. "Mr. Collins, the 
English PAGANINI," treated us to music on his 
violin. A comic singer gave us a song, of which 
I remember the line, 

"You '11 find it all in the agony bill." 

This referred to a bill proposed by Sir Andrew 
Agnew, a noted Scotch Sabbatarian agitator. 

To the opera to hear Grisi. The king, Wil- 
liam the Fourth, was in his box ; also the Prin- 
cess Victoria, with the Duchess of Kent. The 
king tapped with his white-gloved hand on the 



8 INTRODUCTORY. 

ledge of the box when he was pleased with the 
singing. — To a morning concert and heard the 
real Paganini. To one of the lesser theatres and 
heard a monologue by the elder Mathews, who 
died a year or two after this time. To another 
theatre, where I saw Liston in Paul Pry. Is it 
not a relief that I am abstaining from descrip- 
tion of what everybody has heard described ? 

To Windsor. Machinery to the left of the 
road. Recognized it instantly, by recollection 
of the plate in "Rees's Cyclopedia," as Her- 
schel's great telescope. — Oxford. Saw only its 
outside. I knew no one there, and no one knew 
me. — Blenheim, — the Titians best remem- 
bered of its objects on exhibition. The great 
Derby day of the Epsom races. Went to the 
race with a coach-load of friends and acquaint- 
ances. Plenipotentiary, the winner, " rode by 
P. Connelly." So says Herring's picture of him, 
now before me. Chestnut, a great " bullock " 
of a horse, who easily beat the twenty-two that 
started. Every New England deacon ought to 
see one Derby day to learn what sort of a world 
this is he lives in. Man is a sporting as well as 
a praying animal. 



A PROSPECTIVE VISIT. 9 

Stratford-on-Avon. Emotions, but no scrib- 
bling of name on walls. — Warwick. The cas- 
tle. A village festival, " The Opening of the 
Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-bar- 
barism which had come down from Saxon 
times. — Yorkshire. " The Hangman's Stone." 
Story told in my book called the " Autocrat," 
etc. York Cathedral. — Northumberland. Aln- 
wick Castle. The figures on the walls which so 
frightened my man John when he ran away 
from Scotland in his boyhood. 

Berwick-on-Tweed. A regatta going on ; a 
very pretty show. Scotland. Most to be re- 
membered, the incomparable loveliness of Edin- 
burgh. — Sterling. The view of the Links of 
Forth from the castle. The whole country full 
of the romance of history and poetry. Made 
one acquaintance in Scotland, Dr. Robert Knox, 
who asked my companion and myself to break- 
fast. I was treated to five entertainments in 
Great Britain : the breakfast just mentioned ; 
lunch with Mrs. Macadam, — the good old lady 
gave me bread, and not a stone ; dinner with 
Mr. Vaughan ; one with Mr. Stanley, the sur- 
geon ; tea with Mr. Clift, — for all which at- 



10 INTRODUCTORY. 

tentions I was then and am still grateful, for 
they were more than I had any claim to expect. 
Fascinated with Edinburgh. Strolls by Salis- 
bury Crag ; climb to the top of Arthur's Seat ; 
delight of looking up at the grand old castle, of 
looking down on Holyrood Palace, of watching 
the groups on Calton Hill, wandering in the 
quaint old streets and sauntering on the side- 
walks of the noble avenues, even at that time 
adding beauty to the new city. The weeks I 
spent in Edinburgh are among the most memo- 
rable of my European experiences. To the 
Highlands, to the Lakes, in short excursions ; 
to Glasgow, seen to disadvantage under gray 
skies and with slippery pavements. Through 
England rapidly to Dover and to Calais, where I 
found the name of M. Dessein still belonging to 
the hotel I sought, and where I read Sterne's 
" Preface Written in a Desobligeante," sitting 
in the vehicle most like one that I could find in 
the stable. From Calais back to Paris, where I 
began working again. 

All my travelling experiences, including a 
visit to Switzerland and Italy in the summer and 
autumn of 1835, were merely interludes of my 



A PROSPECTIVE VISIT. 11 

student life in Paris. On my return to America, 
after a few years of hospital and private prac- 
tice, I became a Professor in Harvard Univer- 
sity, teaching Anatomy and Physiology, after- 
wards Anatomy alone, for the period of thirty- 
five years, during part of which time I paid 
some attention to literature, and became some- 
what known as the author of several works in 
prose and verse which have been well received. 
My prospective visit will not be a professional 
one, as I resigned my office in 1882, and am no 
longer known chiefly as a teacher or a practi- 
tioner. 
Boston, April, 1886. 



^ 



OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 



I. 

I BEGIN this record witb the columnar, self- 
reliant capital letter to signify that there is no 
disguise in its egoisms. If it were a chapter of 
autobiography, this is what the reader would 
look for as a matter of course. Let him con- 
sider it as being such a chapter, and its egoisms 
will require no apology. 

I have called the record our hundred days, 
because I was accompanied by my daughter, 
without the aid of whose younger eyes and live- 
lier memory, and especially of her faithful diary, 
which no fatigue or indisposition was allowed 
to interrupt, the whole experience would have 
remained in my memory as a photograph out of 
focus. 

We left Boston on the 29th of April, 1886, 
and reached New York on the 29th of August, 
four months of absence in all, of which nearly 



14 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

three weeks were taken up by the two passages, 
one week was spent in Paris, and the rest of 
the time in England and Scotland. 

No one was so much surprised as myself at 
my undertaking this visit. Mr. Gladstone, a 
strong man for his years, is reported as saying 
that he is too old to travel, at least to cross the 
ocean, and he is younger than I am, — just four 
months, to a day, younger. It is true that Sir 
Henry Holland came to this country, and tra- 
velled freely about the world, after he was eighty 
years old ; but his pitcher went to the well once 
too often, and met the usual doom of fragile ar- 
ticles. When my friends asked me why I did 
not go to Europe, I reminded them of the fate 
of Thomas Parr. He was only twice my age, 
and was getting on finely towards his two hun- 
dredth year, when the Earl of Arundel carried 
him up to London, and, being feasted and made 
a lion of, he found there a premature and early 
grave at the age of only one hundred and fifty- 
two years. He lies in Westminster Abbey, it is 
true, but he would probably have preferred the 
upper side of his own hearth-stone to the under 
side of the slab which covers him. 



THE VOYAGE. 15 

I should never have thought of such an expe- 
dition if it had not been suggested by a mem- 
ber of my family that I should accompany my 
daughter, who was meditating a trip to Europe. 
I remembered how many friends had told me 
I ought to go ; among the rest, Mr. Emerson, 
who had spoken to me repeatedly about it. I 
had not seen Europe for more than half a cen- 
tury, and I had a certain longing for one more 
sight of the places I remembered, and others it 
would be a delight to look upon. There were a 
few living persons whom I wished to meet. I 
was assured that I should be kindly received in 
England. All this was tempting enough, but 
there was an obstacle in the way which I feared, 
and, as it proved, not without good reason. I 
doubted whether I could possibly breathe in a 
narrow state-room. In certain localities I have 
found myself liable to attacks of asthma, and, 
although I had not had one for years, I felt sure 
that I could not escape it if I tried to sleep in a 
state-room. I did not escape it, and I am glad 
to tell my story about it, because it excuses some 
of my involuntary social shortcomings, and ena- 
bles me to thank collectively all those kind mem- 



16 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

bers of the profession who trained all the artil- 
lery of the pharmacopoeia upon my troublesome 
enemy, from bicarbonate of soda and Vichy 
water to arsenic and dynamite. One costly con- 
trivance, sent me by the Reverend Mr. Haweis, 
whom I have never duly thanked for it, looked 
more like an angelic trump for me to blow in a 
better world than what I believe it is, an inhal- 
ing tube intended to prolong my mortal respira- 
tion. The best thing in my experience was rec- 
ommended to me by an old friend in London. 
It was Himrod's asthma cure, one of the many 
powders, the smoke of which when burning is in- 
haled. It is made in Providence, Rhode Island, 
and I had to go to London to find it. It never 
failed to give at least temporary relief, but noth- 
ing enabled me to sleep in my state-room, though 
I had it all to myself, the upper berth being 
removed. After the first night and part of the 
second, I never lay down at all while at sea. 
The captain allowed me to have a candle and sit 
up in the saloon, where I worried through the 
night as I best might. How could I be in a 
fit condition to accept the attention of my 
friends in Liverpool, after sitting up every night 



THE VOYAGE. 17 

for more than a week ; and how could I be in a 
mood for the catechizing of interviewers, without 
having once lain down during the whole return 
passage ? I hope the reader will see why I men- 
tion these facts. They explain and excuse many 
things ; they have been alluded to, sometimes 
with exaggeration, in the newspapers, and I 
could not tell my story fairly without mention- 
ing them. I got along well enough as soon as I 
landed, and have had no return of the trouble 
since I have been back in my own home. I will 
not advertise an assortment of asthma remedies 
for sale, but I assure my kind friends I have had 
no use for any one of them since I have walked 
the Boston pavements, drank, not the Cochitu- 
ate, but the Belmont spring water, and breathed 
the lusty air of my native northeasters. 

My companion and I required an attendant, 
and we found one of those useful androgynous 
personages known as courier-maids^ who had 
travelled with friends of ours, and who was ready 
to start with us at a moment's warning. She 
was of English birth, lively, short-gaited, ser- 
viceable, more especially in the first of her dual 
capacities. So far as my wants were concerned, 



18 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I found her zealous and active in providing for 
my comfort. 

It was no sooner announced in the papers that 
I was going to England than I began to hear of 
preparations to welcome me. An invitation to 
a club meeting was cabled across the Atlantic. 
One of my countrywomen who has a house in 
London made an engagement for me to meet 
friends at her residence. A reverend friend, 
who thought I had certain projects in my head, 
wrote to me about lecturing : where I should ap- 
pear, what fees I should obtain, and such busi- 
ness matters. I replied that I was going to 
England to spend money, not to make it ; to hear 
speeches, very possibly, but not to make them ; 
to revisit scenes I had known in my younger 
days ; to get a little change of my routine, which 
I certainly did ; and to enjoy a little rest, which 
I as certainly did not, at least in London. In 
a word, I wished a short vacation, and had no 
thought of doing anything more important than 
rubbing a little rust off and enjoying myself, 
while at the same time I could make my com- 
panion's visit somewhat pleasanter than it would 
be if she went without me. The visit has an- 



THE VOYAGE. 19 

swered most of its purposes for both of us, and 
if we have saved a few recollections which our 
friends can take any pleasure in reading, this 
slight record may be considered a work of super- 
erogation. 

The Cephalonia was to sail at half past six in 
the morning, and at that early hour a company 
of well-wishers was gathered on the wharf at 
East Boston to bid us good-by. We took with 
us many tokens of their thoughtful kindness; 
flowers and fruits from Boston and Cambridge, 
and a basket of champagne from a Concord 
friend whose company is as exhilarating as the 
sparkling wine he sent us. With the other gifts 
came a small tin box, about as big as a common 
round wooden match box. I supposed it to hold 
some pretty gimcrack, sent as a pleasant part- 
ing token of remembrance. It proved to be a 
most valued daily companion, useful at all times, 
never more so than when the winds were blow- 
ing hard and the ship was struggling with the 
waves. There must have been some magic 
secret in it, for I am sure that I looked five 
years younger after closing that little box than 



20 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

when I opened it. Time will explain its myste- 
rious power. 

All the usual provisions for comfort made by 
sea-going experts we had attended to. Imper- 
meable rugs and fleecy shawls, head-gear to 
defy the rudest northeasters, sea-chairs of ample 
dimensions, which we took care to place in as 
sheltered situations as we could find, — all these 
were a matter of course. Everybody stays on 
deck as much as possible^ and lies wrapped up 
and spread out at full length on his or her sea- 
chair, so that the deck looks as if it had a row 
of mummies on exhibition. Nothing is more 
comfortable, nothing, I should say, more indis- 
pensable, than a hot- water bag, — or rather, 
two hot-water bags; for they will burst some- 
times, as I found out, and a passenger who has 
become intimate with one of these warm bosom 
friends feels its loss almost as if it were human. 

Passengers carry all sorts of luxuries on board, 
in the firm faith that they shall be able to profit 
by them all. Friends send them various indi- 
gestibles. To many all these well-meant prepa- 
rations soon become a mockery, almost an insult. 
It is a clear case of Sic(Tc) vos non vohis. The 



THE VOYAGE. 21 

tougher neiglibor is the gainer by these acts of 
kindness ; the generosity ^of a sea-sick sufferer 
in giving away the delicacies which seemed so 
desirable on starting is not ranked very high 
on the books of the recording angel. With us 
three things were best : grapes, oranges, and 
especially oysters, of which we had provided a 
half barrel in the shell. The " butcher " of the 
ship opened them fresh for us every day, and 
they were more acceptable than anything else. 

Among our ship's company were a number of 
family relatives and acquaintances. We formed 
a natural group at one of the tables, where we 
met in more or less complete numbers. I 
myself never missed ; my companion, rarely. 
Others were sometimes absent, and sometimes 
came to time when they were in a very doubtful 
state, looking as if they were saying to them- 
selves, with Lear, — 

" Down, thou climbing sorrow, 
Thy element 's below." 

As for the intellectual condition of the passen- 
gers, I should say that faces were prevailingly 
vacuous, their owners half hypnotized, as it 
seemed, by the monotonous throb and tremor of 



22 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

the great sea-monster on whose back we were 
riding. I myself had few thoughts, fancies, 
emotions. One thing above all struck me as 
never before, — the terrible solitude of the 
ocean. 

" So lonely 't was that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. ' ' 

Whole days passed without our seeing a single 
sail. The creatures of the deep which gather 
around sailing vessels are perhaps frightened 
off by the noise and stir of the steamship. At 
any rate, we saw nothing more than a few por- 
poises, so far as I remember. 

No man can find himself over the abysses, 
the floor of which is paved with wrecks and 
white with the bones of the shrieking myriads 
of human beings whom the waves have swallowed 
up, without some thought of the dread possibili- 
ties hanging over his fate. There is only one 
way to get rid of them : that which an old sea- 
captain mentioned to me, namely, to keep one's 
self under opiates until he wakes up in the 
harbor where he is bound. I did not take this 
as serious advice, but its meaning is that one 
who has all his senses about him cannot help 



THE VOYAGE. 23 

being anxious. My old friend, whose beard 
had been shaken in many a tempest, knew too 
well that there is cause enough for anxiety. 

What does the reader suppose was the source 
of the most ominous thought which forced itself 
upon my mind, as I walked the decks of the 
mighty vessel? Not the sound of the rushing 
winds, nor the sight of the foam-crested billows ; 
not the sense of the awful imprisoned force 
which was wrestling in the depths below me. 
The ship is made to struggle with the elements, 
and the giant has been tamed to obedience, and 
is manacled in bonds which an earthquake 
would hardly rend asunder. No ! It was the 
sight of the boats hanging along at the sides of 
the deck, — the boats, always suggesting the 
fearful possibility that before another day dawns 
one may be tossing about in the watery Sahara, 
shelterless, fireless, almost foodless, with a fate 
before him he dares not contemplate. No doubt 
we should feel worse without the boats ; still 
they are dreadful tell-tales. To all who re- 
member Gericault's Wreck of the Medusa, — 
and those who have seen it do not forget it, — 
the picture the mind draws is one it shudders at. 



24 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

To be sure, the poor wretches in the painting 
were on a raft, but to think of fifty people in 
one of these open boats ! Let us go down into 
the cabin, where at least we shall not see them. 

The first morning at sea revealed the mystery 
of the little round tin box. The process of shav- 
ing^ never a delightful one, is a very unpleasant 
and awkward piece of business when the floor 
on which one stands, the glass in which he looks, 
and he himself are all describing those complex 
curves which make cycles and epicycles seem 
like simplicity itself. The little box contained 
a reaping machine, which gathered the capillary 
harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a 
thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facil- 
ity which were a surprise, almost a revelation. 
The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one ; 
I remember the " Plantagenet " razor, so called, 
with the comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving 
just enough of the edge free to do its work. But 
this little affair had a blade only an inch and a 
half long by three quarters of an inch wide. It 
had a long slender handle, which took apart for 
packing, and was put together with the greatest 
ease. It was, in short, a lawn-mower for the 



THE VOYAGE. 25 

masculine growth of which the proprietor wishes 
to rid his countenance. The mowing operation 
required no glass, could be performed with al- 
most reckless boldness, as one cannot cut him- 
self, and in fact had become a pleasant amuse- 
ment instead of an irksome task. I have never 
used any other means of shaving from that day 
to this. I was so pleased with it that I exhib- 
ited it to the distinguished tonsors of Burlington 
Arcade, half afraid they would assassinate me 
for bringing in an innovation which bid fair to 
destroy their business. They probably took me 
for an agent of the manufacturers; and so I 
was, but not in their pay nor with their know- 
ledge. I determined to let other persons know 
what a convenience I had found the " Star 
Kazor " of Messrs. Kampf, of New York, with- 
out fear of reproach for so doing. I know my 
danger, — does not Lord Byron say, " I have 
even been accused of writing puffs for Warren's 
blacking " ? I was once offered pay for a poem 
in praise of a certain stove polish, but I de- 
clined. It is pure good-will to my race which 
leads me to commend the Star Razor to all who 
travel by land or by sea, as well as to all who 
stay at home. 



26 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

"With the first sight of land many a passenger 
draws a long sigh of relief. Yet everybody 
knows that the worst dangers begin after we 
have got near enough to see the shore, for there 
are several ways of landing, not all of which are 
equally desirable. On Saturday, May 8th, we 
first caught a glimpse of the Irish coast, and at 
half past four in the afternoon we reached the 
harbor of Queenstown. A tug came off, bring- 
ing newspapers, letters, and so forth, among the 
rest some thirty letters and telegrams for me. 
This did not look much like rest, but this was 
only a slight prelude to what was to follow. I 
w^s in no condition to go on shore for sight- 
seeing, as some of the passengers did. 

We made our way througli the fog towards 
Liverpool, and arrived at 1.30, on Sunday, May 
9th. A special tug came to take us off : on it 
were the American consul, Mr. Russell, the 
vice-consul, Mr. Sewall, Dr. Nevins, and Mr. 
Rathbone, who came on behalf of our as yet 
unseen friend, Mr. Willett, of Brighton, England. 
Our Liverpool friends were meditating more 
hospitalities to us than, in our fatigued condition, 
we were equal to supporting. They very kindly, 



LIVERPOOL. — CHESTER, 27 

however, acquiesced in our wishes, which were for 
as much rest as we could possibly get before any 
attempt to busy ourselves with social engage- 
ments. So they conveyed us to the Grand Hotel 
for a short time, and then saw us safely off to 
the station to take the train for Chester, where 
we arrived in due season, and soon found our- 
selves comfortably established at the Grosvenor 
Arms Hotel. A large basket of Surrey prim- 
roses was brought by Mr. Eathbone to my com- 
panion. I had set before me at the hotel a very 
handsome floral harp, which my friend's friend 
had offered me as a tribute. It made melody in 
my ears as sweet as those hyacinths of Shelley's, 
the music of whose bells was so 

*' delicate, soft, and intense, 
It was felt like an odor within the sense." 

At Chester we had the blissful security of being 
unknown, and were left to ourselves. Americans 
know Chester better than most other old towns 
in England, because they so frequently stop 
there awhile on their way from Liverpool to 
London. It has a mouldy old cathedral, an old 
wall, partly Roman, strange old houses with 
overhanging upper floors, which make sheltered 



28 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

sidewallis and dark basements. When one sees 
an old house in New England with the second 
floor projecting a foot or two beyond the wall of 
the ground floor, the country boy will tell him 
that " them haouses was built so th't th' folks up- 
stairs could shoot the Injins when they was try- 
in' to git three w th' door or int' th' winder," 
There are plenty of such houses all over Eng- 
land, where there are no " Injins " to shoot. 
But the story adds interest to the somewhat 
lean traditions of our rather dreary past, and it 
is hardly worth while to disturb it. I always 
heard it in my boyhood. Perhaps it is true ; 
certainly it was a very convenient arrange- 
ment for discouraging an untimely visit. The 
oval lookouts in porches, common in our Essex 
County, have been said to answer a similar pur- 
pose, that of warning against the intrusion of 
undesirable visitors. The walk round the old 
wall of Chester is wonderfully interesting and 
beautiful. At one part it overlooks a wide level 
field, over which the annual races are run. I 
noticed that here as elsewhere the short grass 
was starred with daisies. They are not consid- 
ered in place in a well-kept lawn. But remem- 



CHESTER. — EA TON HALL. 29 

bering the cuckoo song in Love*s Labour Lost, 
" When daisies pied ... do paint the meadows 
with delight," it was hard to look at them as 
unwelcome intruders. 

The old cathedral seemed to me particularly- 
mouldy, and in fact too high-flavored with an- 
tiquity. I could not help comparing some of 
the ancient cathedrals and abbey churches to so 
many old cheeses. They have a tough gray 
rind and a rich interior, which find food and 
lodging for numerous tenants who live and die 
under their shelter or their shadow, — lowly 
servitors some of them, portly dignitaries others, 
humble holy ministers of religion many, I doubt 
not, — larva? of angels, who will get their wings 
by and by. It is a shame to carry the compari- 
son so far, but it is natural enough ; for Cheshire 
cheeses are among the first things we think of 
as we enter that section of the country, and 
this venerable cathedral is the first that greets 
the eyes of great numbers of Americans. 

We drove out to Eaton Hall, the seat of the 
Duke of Westminster, the many-millioned lord 
of a good part of London. It is a palace, high- 
roofed, marble - columned, vast, magnificent, 



30 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

everything but homelike, and perhaps homelike 
to persons born and bred in such edifices. A 
painter like Paul Veronese finds a palace like 
this not too grand for his banqueting scenes. 
But to those who live, as most of us do, in 
houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfort- 
able, which the owner's presence fills sufficiently, 
leaving room for a few visitors, a vast marble 
palace is disheartening and uninviting. I never 
get into a very large and lofty saloon without 
feeling as if I were a weak solution of myself, — 
my personality almost drowned out in the flood 
of space about me. The wigwam is more home- 
like than the cavern. Our wooden houses are a 
better kind of wigwam ; the marble palaces are 
artificial caverns, vast, resonant, chilling, good 
to visit, not desirable to live in, for most of us. 
One's individuality should betray itself in all 
that surrounds him ; he should secrete his shell, 
like a mollusk ; if he can sprinkle a few pearls 
through it, so much the better. It is best, per- 
haps, that one should avoid being a duke and 
living in a palace, — that is, if he has his choice 
in the robing chamber where souls are fitted 
with their earthly garments. 



CHESTER. — EATON HALL. 31 

One of the most interesting parts of my visit 
to Eaton Hall was my tour through the stables. 
The Duke is a famous breeder and lover of the 
turf. Mr. Rathbone and myself soon made the 
acquaintance of the chief of the stable depart- 
ment. Readers of Homer do not want to be re- 
minded that hi2)2:»odamoio, horse-subduer, is the 
genitive of an epithet applied as a chief honor 
to the most illustrious heroes. It is the last 
word of the last line of the Iliad, and fitly closes 
the account of the funeral pageant of Hector, the 
tamer of horses. We Americans are a little shy 
of confessing that any title or conventional gran- 
deur makes an impression upon us. If at home 
we wince before any official with a sense of 
blighted inferiority, it is by general confession 
the clerk at the hotel office. There is an excuse 
for this, inasmuch as he holds our destinies in 
his hands, and decides whether, in case of acci- 
dent, we shall have to jump from the third or 
sixth story window. Lesser grandeurs do not 
find us very impressible. There is, however, 
something about the man who deals in horses 
which takes down the spirit, however proud, of 
him who is unskilled in equestrian matters and 



82 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

unused to the horse-lover's vocabulary. We 
followed the master of the stables, meekly listen- 
ing and once in a while questioning. I had to 
fall back on my reserves, and summoned up 
memories half a century old to gain the respect 
and win the confidence of the great horse-sub- 
duer. He showed us various fine animals, some 
in their stalls, some outside of them. Chief of 
all was the renowned Bend Or, a Derby winner, 
a noble and beautiful bay, destined in a few 
weeks to gain new honors on the same turf in 
the triumph of his offspring Ormonde, whose 
acquaintance we shall make by and by. 

The next day, Tuesday, May 11th, at 4.25, 
we took the train for London. We had a saloon 
car, which had been thoughtfully secured for 
us through unseen, not unsuspected, agencies, 
which had also beautified the compartment with 
flowers. 

Here are some of my first impressions of Eng- 
land as seen from the carriage and from the 
cars. — How very English ! I recall Birket 
Foster's Pictures of English Landscape, — a 
beautiful, poetical series of views, but hardly 
more poetical than the reality. How thoroughly 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND. 83 

England is groomed ! Our New England out- 
of-doors landscape often looks as if it had just 
got out of bed, and had not finished its toilet. 
The glowing green of everything strikes me : 
green hedges in place of our rail-fences, always 
ugly, and our rude stone-walls, which are not 
wanting in a certain look of fitness approaching 
to comeliness, and are really picturesque when 
lichen-coated, but poor features of landscape as 
compared to these universal hedges. I am dis- 
appointed in the trees, so far ; I have not seen 
one large tree as yet. Most of those I see are of 
very moderate dimensions, feathered all the way 
up their long slender trunks, with a lop-sided 
mop of leaves at the top, like a wig which has 
slipped awry. I trust that I am not finding 
everything coulenr de rose ; but I certainly do 
find the cheeks of children and young persons of 
such brilliant rosy hue as I do not remember 
that I have ever seen before. I am almost ready 
to think this and that child's face has been col- 
ored from a pink saucer. If the Saxon youth 
exposed for sale at Rome, in the days of Pope 
Gregory the Great, had complexions like these 
children, no wonder that the pontiff exclaimed, 



34 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Not Angli, but angeli I All this may sound a 
little extravagant, but I am giving my impres- 
sions without any intentional exaggeration. 
How far these first impressions may be modified 
by after-experiences there will be time enough 
to find out and to tell. It is better to set them 
down at once just as they are. A first impres- 
sion is one never to be repeated; the second 
look will see much that was not noticed before, 
but it will not reproduce the sharp lines of the 
first proof, which is always interesting, no mat- 
ter what the eye or the mind fixes upon. " I see 
men as trees walking." That first experience 
could not be mended. When Dickens landed 
in Boston, he was struck with the brightness of 
all the objects he saw, — buildings, signs, and so 
forth. When I landed in Liverpool, everything 
looked very dark, very dingy, very massive, in 
the streets I drove through. So in London, but 
in a week it all seemed natural enough. 

We got to the hotel where we had engaged 
quarters, at eleven o'clock in the evening of 
Wednesday, the 12th of May. Everything was 
ready for us, — a bright fire blazing and supper 
waiting. When we came to look at the accom- 



LONDON. 35 

modations, we found they were not at all adapted 
to our needs. It was impossible to stay there 
another night. So early the next morning we 
sent out our courier-maid, a dove from the ark, 
to find us a place where we could rest the soles 
of our feet. London is a nation of something 
like four millions of inhabitants, and one does 
not feel easy without he has an assured place of 
shelter. The dove flew all over the habitable 
districts of the city, — inquired at as manj^ as 
twenty houses. No roosting-place for our little 
flock of three. At last the good angel who fol- 
lowed us everywhere, in one shape or another, 
pointed the wanderer to a place which corre- 
sponded with all our requirements and wishes. 
This was at No. 17 Dover Street, Mackellar's 
Hotel, where we found ourselves comfortably 
lodged and well cared for during the whole time 
we were in London. It was close to Piccadilly 
and to Bond Street. Near us, in the same range, 
were Brown's Hotel and Batt's Hotel, both 
widely known to the temporary residents of 
London. 

We were but partially recovered from the 
fatigues and trials of the voyage when our 



36 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

arrival pulled the string of the social shower- 
bath, and the invitations began pouring down 
upon us so fast that we caught our breath, 
and felt as if we should be smothered. The 
first evening saw us at a great dinner-party at 
our well-remembered friend Lady Harcourt's. 
Twenty guests, celebrities and agreeable per- 
sons, with or without titles. The tables were 
radiant with silver, glistening with choice porce- 
lain, blazing with a grand show of tulips. This 
was our " baptism of fire " in that long conflict 
which lasts through the London season. After 
dinner came a grand reception, most interesting, 
but fatiguing to persons hardly as yet in good 
condition for social service. We lived through 
it, however, and enjoyed meeting so many 
friends, known and unknown, who were very 
cordial and pleasant in their way of receiving us. 
It was plain that we could not pretend to an- 
swer all the invitations which flooded our tables. 
If we had attempted it, we should have found 
no time for anything else. A secretary was evi- 
dently a matter of immediate necessity. Through 
the kindness of Mrs. Pollock, we found a young 
lady who was exactly fitted for the place. She 



LONDON. 37 

was installed in the little room intended for her, 
and began the work o£ accepting with pleasure 
and regretting our inability, of acknowledging 
the receipt of books, flowers, and other objects, 
and being very sorry that we could not subscribe 
to this good object and attend that meeting in 
behalf of a deserving charity, — in short, writ- 
ing almost everything for us except autographs, 
which I can warrant were always genuine. The 
poor young lady was almost tired out sometimes, 
having to stay at her table, on one occasion, so 
late as eleven in the evening, to get through her 
day's work. I simplified matters for her by 
giving her a set of formulae as a base to start 
from, and she proved very apt at the task of 
modifying each particular letter to suit its pur- 
pose. 

From this time forward continued a perpetual 
round of social engagements. Breakfasts, 
luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions with spread 
tables, two, three, and four deep of an evening, 
with receiving company at our own rooms, took 
up the day, so that we had very little time for 
common sight-seeing. 

Of these kinds of entertainment, the break- 



38 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

fast, though pleasant enough when the company 
is agreeable, as I always found it, is the least 
convenient of all times and modes of visiting. 
You have already interviewed one breakfast, 
and are expecting soon to be coquetting with a 
tempting luncheon. If one had as many stom- 
achs as a ruminant, he would not mind three 
or four serious meals a day, not counting the 
tea as one of them. The luncheon is a very 
convenient affair : it does not require special 
dress ; it is informal ; it is soon over, and may 
be made light or heavy, as one chooses. The 
afternoon tea is almost a necessity in London 
life. It is considered useful as " a pick me up," 
and it serves an admirable purpose in the social 
system. It costs the household hardly any 
trouble or expense. It brings people together 
in the easiest possible way, for ten minutes or 
an hour, just as their engagements or fancies 
may settle it. A cup of tea at the right moment 
does for the virtuous reveller all that Falstaff 
claims for a good sherris-sack, or at least the 
first half of its " twofold operation : " "It 
ascends me into the brain ; dries me there all 
the foolish and duU and crudy vapors which en- 



LONDON. 39 

viron it ; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, 
full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes, which 
delivered over to the voice, the tongue, which is 
the birth, becomes excellent wit." 

But it must have the right brain to work 
upon, and I doubt if there is any brain to which 
it is so congenial and from which it brings so 
much as that of a first-rate London old lady. 
I came away from the great city with the feel- 
ing that this most complex product of civiliza- 
tion was nowhere else developed to such perfec- 
tion. The octogenarian Londoness has been in 
society, — let us say the highest society, — all 
her days. She is as tough as an old macaw, or 
she would not have lasted so long. She has 
seen and talked with all the celebrities of three 
generations, all the beauties of at least half a 
dozen decades. Her wits have been kept bright 
by constant use, and as she is free of speech it 
requires some courage to face her. Yet nobody 
can be more agreeable, even to young persons, 
than one of these precious old dowagers. A 
great beauty is almost certainly thinking how 
she looks while one is talking with her ; an au- 
thoress is waiting to have one praise her book ; 



40 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

but a grand old lady, who loves London society, 
who lives in it, who understands young people 
and all sorts of people, with her high-colored 
recollections of the past and her grand-maternal 
interests in the new generation, is the best of 
companions, especially over a cup of tea just I 
strong enough to stir up her talking ganglions. J 
A breakfast, a lunch, a tea, is a circumstance, 
an occurrence, in social life, but a dinner is an 
event. It is the full-blown flower of that cul- 
tivated growth of which those lesser products 
are the buds. I will not try to enumerate, still 
less to describe, the various entertainments to 
which we were invited, and many of which we 
attended. Among the professional friends I 
found or made during this visit to London, none 
were more kindly attentive than Dr. Priestley, 
who, with his charming wife, the daughter of 
the late Robert Chambers, took more pains to 
carry out our wishes than we could have asked 
or hoped for. At his house I first met Sir 
James Paget and Sir William Gull, long well 
known to me, as to the medical profession every- 
where, as preeminent in their several depart- 
ments. If I were an interviewer or a news- 



LONDON. 41 

paper reporter, I should be tempted to give the 
impression which the men and women of dis- 
tinction I met made upon me ; but where all 
were cordial, where all made me feel as nearly 
as they could that I belonged where I found 
myself, whether the ceiling were a low or a lofty 
one, I do not care to differentiate my hosts and 
my other friends. Fortemque Gyan fortemque 
Cloanthum^ — I left my microscope and my 
test-papers at home. 

Our friends, several of them, had a pleasant 
way of sending their carriages to give us a drive 
in the Park, where, except in certain permitted 
regions, the common numbered vehicles are not 
allowed to enter. Lady Harcourt sent her car- 
riage for us to go to her sister's, Mrs. Mild- 
may's, where we had a pleasant little "tea," 
and met one of the most agreeable and remark- 
able of those London old ladies I have spoken 
of. For special occasions we hired an unnum- 
bered carriage, with professionally equipped 
driver and footman. 

Mrs. Bloomfield Moore sent her carriage for 
us to take us to a lunch at her house, where we 
met Mr. Browning, Sir Henry and Lady Lay- 



42 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IX EUROPE. 

ard, Oscar Wilde and his handsome wife, and 
other well-known guests. After lunch, recita- 
tions, songs, etc. House full of pretty things. 
Among other curiosities a portfolio of drawings 
illustrating Keeley's motor, which, up to this 
time, has manifested a remarkably powerful 
vis inerticB, but which promises miracles. In 
the evening a gTand reception at Lady Gran- 
ville's, beginning (for us, at least) at eleven 

o'clock. The house a palace, and A thinks 

there were a thousand people there. We made 
the tour of the rooms, saw many great person- 
ages, had to wait for our carriage a long time, 
but got home at one o'clock. 

English people have queer notions about iced- 
water and ice-cream. " You will surely die, 
eating such cold stuff," said a lady to my com- 
panion. " Oh, no," she answered, " but I should 
certainly die were I to drink your two cups of 
strong tea." I approved of this " counter " on 
the teacup, but I did not think either of them 
was in much danger. 

The next day Rev. Mr. Haweis sent his car- 
riage, and we drove in the Park. In the after- 
noon we went to our Minister's to see the Amer- 



LONDON. 43 

icaii ladies who had been presented at the draw- 
ing-room. After this, both of us were glad to 
pass a day or two in comparative quiet, except 
that we had a room full of visitors. So many 
persons expressed a desire to make our acquaint- 
ance that we thought it would be acceptable to 
them if we would give a reception ourselves. 
We were thinking how we could manage it with 
our rooms at the hotel, which were not arranged 
so that they could be thrown together. Still, 
we were planning to make the best of them, 
when Dr. and Mrs. Priestley suggested that we 
should receive our company at their house. 
This was a surprise, and a most welcome one, 
and A and her kind friend busied them- 
selves at once about the arrangements. 

We went to a luncheon at Lansdowne House, 
Lord Rosebery's residence, not far from our 
hotel. My companion tells a little incident 
which may please an American six-year-old: 
" The eldest of the four children, Sibyl, a pretty, 
bright child of six, told me that she wrote a let- 
ter to the Queen. I said, ' Did you begin. Dear 
Queen ? ' ' No,' she answered, ' I began. Your 
Majesty, and signed myself, Your little humble 



44 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

servant, Sibyl." A very cordial and homelike 
reception at this groat house, where a couple of 
hours were passed most agreeably. 

On the following Sunday I went to Westmin- 
ster Abbey to hear a sermon from Canon Har- 
ford on A Cheerful Life. A lively, wholesome, 
and encouraging discourse, such as it would do 
many a forlorn New England congregation good 
to hoar. In the afternoon we both went together 
to the Abbey. Met our Beverly neighbor, Mrs. 
Vaughan, and adopted her as one of our party. 
The seats we were to have were full, and we 
had to be stowed where there was any place that 
would hold us. I was smuggled into a stall, 
going through long and narrow passages, be- 
tween crowded rows of people, and found my- 
self at last with a big book before me and a set 
of official personages around me, whose duties 
I did not clearly understand. I thought they 
might be mutes, or something of that sort, sal^ 
(^ried to look grave and keep quiet. After ser- 
vice we took tea with Dean Bradley, and after 
tea we visited the Jerusalem Chamber. I had 
been twice invited to weddinsfs in that famous 
room : once to the marriage of my friend Mot- 



LONDON. — LYCEUM THEATRE. 45 

ley's daugliter, then to that of Mr. Frederick 
Locker's daughter to Lionel Tennyson, whose 
recent death has been so deei)ly mourned. I 
never expected to see that flerusaleni in which 
Harry the Fourth died, but there I found my- 
self in the large panelled chamber, with all its 
associati(ms. The ohler memories came up but 
vaguely ; an American finds it as hard to call j 
back anything over two or three centuries old ! 
as a sucking-pump to draw up water from a 1 
depth of over thirty-three feet and a fraction. ' 

After this A went to a musical i)arty, dined 

witli the Vaughans, and had a good time among 
American friends. 

The next evening we went to the Lyceum 
Theatre to see Mr. Irving. He had placed the 
Royal box at our disposal, so we invited our 
friends the Priestleys to go with us, and we all 
enjoyed the evening mightily. Between the 
scenes we went behind the curtain, and saw the 
very curious and admirable machinery .of the 
dramatic spectacle. We made the acquaintance 
of several imps and demons, who were got up 
wonderfully well. Ellen Terry was as fascinat- 
ing as ever. I remembered that once before I 



46 OUR nUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

had met her and Mr. Irving behind the scenes. 
It was at the Boston Theatre, and while I was 
talking with them a very heavy piece of scenery 
came crashing down, and filled the whole place 
with dust. It was but a short distance from 
where we were standing, and I could not help 
thinking how near our several life-dramas came 
to a simultaneous exeunt omncs. 

A long visit from a polite interviewer, shop- 
ping, driving, calling, arranging about the peo- 
ple to be invited to our reception, and an agree- 
able dinner at Chelsea with my American 
friend, Mrs. Merritt, filled np this day full 
enough, and left us in good condition for the 
next, which was to be a very busy one. 

In the Introduction to these papers, I men- 
tioned the fact that more than half a century 
ago I went to the famous Derby race at Epsom. 
I determined, if possible, to see the Derby of 
1886, as I had seen that of 1834. I must have 
spoken of this intention to some interviewer, for 
I find the following paragraph in an English 
sporting newspaper, " The Field," for May 29th, 
1886 : — 

" The Derby has always been the one event 



EPSOM. 47 

in the racing year which statesmen, philoso- 
phers, poets, essayists, and litterateurs desire to 
see once in their lives. A few years since Mr. 
Gladstone was induced by Lord Granville and 
Lord Wolverton to run down to Epsom on the 
Derby day. The impression produced upon the 
Prime Minister's sensitive and emotional mind 
was that the mirth and hilarity displayed by his 
compatriots upon Epsom race-course was Italian 
rather than English in its character. On the 
other hand, Gustave Dore, who also saw the 
Derby for the first and only time in his life, ex- 
claimed, as he gazed with horror upon the faces 
below him, Quelle scene hrutale I We wonder 
to which of these two impressions Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes inclined, if he went last 
Wednesday to Epsom ! Probably the well- 
known, etc., etc. — Of one thing Dr. Holmes 
may rest finally satisfied: the Derby of 188G 
may possibly have seemed to him far less excit- 
ing than that of 1834 ; but neither in 1834 nor 
in any other year was the great race ever won 
by a better sportsman or more honorable man 
than the Duke of Westminster." 

My desire to see the Derby of this year was 



48 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of the same origin and character as that which 
led me to revisit many scenes which I remem- 
bered. I cared quite as much about renewing 
old impressions as about getting new ones. I 
enjoyed everything which I had once seen all 
the more from the blending of my recollections 
with the present as it was before me. 

The Derby day of 1834 was exceedingly 
windy and dusty. Our party, riding on the out- 
side of the coach, was half smothered with the 
dust, and arrived in a very deteriorated condi- 
tion, but recompensed for it by the extraordi- 
nary sights we had witnessed. There was no 
train in those days, and the whole road between 
London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of 
all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and 
wheelbarrows. My friends and I mingled freely 
in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of 
the occasion. The thimble-riggers were out in 
great force, with their light, movable tables, the 
cups or thimbles, and the " little jokers," and 
the coachman, the sham gentleman, the country 
greenhorn, all properly got up and gathered 
about the table. I think we had " Aunt Sally," 
too, — the figure with a pipe in her mouth, 



EPSOM. 49 

which one might shy a stick at for a penny or 
two and win something, I forget what. The 
clearing the course of stragglers, and the chas- 
ing about of the frightened little dog who had 
got in between the thick ranks of spectators, 
reminded me of what I used to see on old " ar- 
tillery election " days. 

It was no common race that I went to see in 
1834. " It is asserted in the colunms of a con- 
tem])orary that Plenipotentiary was absolutely 
the IxNst horse of the century." This was tlie 
winner of the race I saw so long ago. Her- 
ring's colored portrait, which I have always 
kept, shows him as a great, powerful chestnut 
horse, well deserving the name of "bullock," 
whicli one of the jockeys applied to him. "Ru- 
mor credits Dr. Holmes," so "The Field" says, 
" witli desiring mentally to compare his two 
Derbies with each other." I wjis most fortu- 
nate in my objects of comparison. The horse I 
was about to see win was not unworthy of being 
named with tlie renowned champion of my ear- 
lier day. I (jiiote from a writer in the " Lon- 
don Morning Post," whose words, it will be 
seen, carry authority with them : — 



50 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

" Deep as has hitherto been my reverence for 
Plenipotentiary, Bay Middleton, and Queen of 
Trumps from hearsay, and for Don John, Cru- 
cifix, etc., etc., from my own personal know- 
ledge, I am inclined to award the palm to Or- 
monde as the best three-year-old I have ever 
seen during close upon half a century's connec- 
tion with the turf." 

Ormonde, the Duke of Westminster's horse, 
was the son of that other winner of the Derby, 
Bend Or, whom I saw at Eaton Hall. 

Perhaps some coeval of mine may think it 
was a rather youthful idea to go to the race. I 
cannot help that. I was off on my first long 
vacation for half a century, and had a right to 
my whims and fancies. But it was one thing to 
go in with a vast crowd at five and twenty, and 
another thing to run the risks of the excursion 
at more than thrice that age. I looked about 
me for means of going safely, and could think 
of nothing better than to ask one of the plea- 
santest and kindest of gentlemen, to whom I had 
a letter from Mr. Winthrop, at whose house I 
had had the pleasure of making his acquaint- 
ance. Lord Eosebery suggested that the best 



EPSOM. 61 

way would be for me to go in the special train 
which was to carry the Prince of Wales. First, 
then, I was to be introduced to his Royal High- 
ness, which office was kindly undertaken by our 
very obliging and courteous Minister, Mr. 
Phelps. After this all was easily arranged, and 
I was cared for as well as if I had been Mr. 
Phelps himself. On the grand stand I found 
myself in the midst of the great people, who 
were all very natural, and as much at their ease 
as the rest of the world. The Prince is of a 
lively temperament and a very cheerful aspect, 
— a young girl would call him " jolly " as well 
as "nice." I recall the story of "Mr. Pope" 
and his Prince of Wales, as told by Horace 
Walpole. " Mr. Pope, you don't love princes." 
" Sir, I beg your pardon." " Well, you don't 
love kings, then." " Sir, I own I love the lion 
best before his claws are grown." Certainly, 
nothing in Prince Albert Edward suggests any 
aggressive weapons or tendencies. The lovely, 
youthful - looking, gracious Alexandra, the al- 
ways affable and amiable Princess Louise, the 
tall youth who sees the crown and sceptre afar 
off in his dreams, the slips of girls so like many 



62 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

school misses we left behind us, — all these 
grand personages, not being on exhibition, but 
ojff enjoying themselves, just as I was and as 
other people were, seemed very much like their 
fellow - mortals. It is really easier to feel at 

f home with the highest people in the land than 
with the awkward commoner who was knighted 

\^ yesterday. When " My Lord and Sir Paul " 
came into the Club which Goldsmith tells us of, 
the hilarity of the evening was instantly checked. 
The entrance of a dignitary like the present 
Prince of Wales would not have spoiled the fun 
of the evening. If there is any one accomplish- 
ment specially belonging to princes, it is that of 
making the persons they meet feel at ease. 

The grand stand to which I was admitted was 
a little privileged republic. I remember Thack- 
eray's story of his asking some simple question 
of a royal or semi-royal personage whom he met 
in the courtyard of an hotel, which question his 
Highness did not answer, but called a subordi- 
nate to answer for him. I had been talking 
some time with a tall, good-looking gentleman, 
whom I took for a nobleman to whom I had 
been introduced. Something led me to think I 



EPSOM. 63 

was mistaken in the identity of tliis gentleman. 
I asked him, at last, if he were not So and So. 
" No," he said, " I am Prince Christian." You 
are a Christian prince, anyhow, I said to my 
self, if I may judge by your manners. 

I once made a similar mistake in addressing 
a young fellow-citizen of some social pretensions. 
I apologized for my error. 

"No offence," he answered. 

Offence indeed ! I should hope not. But 
he had not the " maniere de prince^'' or he would 
never have used that word. 

I must say something about the race I had 
taken so much pains to see. There was a pre- 
liminary race, which excited comparatively little 
interest. After this the horses were shown in 
the paddock, and many of our privileged party 
went down from the stand to look at them. 
Then they were brought out, smooth, shining, 
fine-drawn, frisky, spirit-stirring to look upon, 
— most beautiful of all the bay horse Ormonde, 
who could hardly be restrained, such was his 
eagerness for action. The horses disappear in 
the distance. — They are off, — not yet distin- 
guishable, at least to me. A little waiting time, 



54 OCR HUNDRED DAYS IN ErROPE. 

and they swim into onr ken, bnt in what order 
of precedenco it is as yet not easy to say. Here 
they come ! Two horses have emerged from the 
niek, and are sweeping, rnsliing, storming, to- 
wards ns, abnost side by side. On6 slides by 
the other, half a length, a length, a length and 
a half. Those are Areher's colors, and tlie 
beantifnl bay Ormonde flashes by the line, win- 
ner of the Derby of 188l>. ^^ The Ixird" has 
made a good fight for the lirst place, mid comes 
in second. Poor Archer, the king of the jock- 
eys I He will bestride no more Derby winners. 
A few weeks later he died by his own hand. 

"Wliik* the race was going on, the yells of the 
betting erowtl beneath ns were incessant. It 
must have been the frantic cries and movements 
of these peo})lc that caused Gustave Dore to 
characterize it as a brutal scene. The vast mob 
which thronged the wide space beyond the shout- 
ing circle just round us was nuieh like that of 
any other fair, so far as I could see from my 
royal perch. The nu^st conspicuous object was a 
man on an inunensely tall pair of stilts, stalking 
about among the crowd. I think it probable 
that 1 had as nmch enjoyment in forming one of 



EPSOM. 65 

tho great mob m 1884 as I had among the gran- 
deurs in 1886, but the last is pleasanter to re- 
member and especially to tell of. 

After the race we had a luncheon served us, a 
comfoi'tablc and substantial one, which was very 
far from unwelcome. I did not go to tlio Derby 
to bet on the winner. But as I went in to 
luncheon, I passed a gentleman standing in cus- 
tody of a plate half covered with sovereigns. 
lie politely asked me if I would take a little 
paper from a heap there was lying by the plate, 
and add a sovereign to tho collection already 
there. I did so, and, unfolding my paper, found 
it was a blank, and ])assed on. The pool, as I 
afterwards learned, fell to the lot of the Turkish 
Ambassador. I found it very windy and uncom- 
fortable on the more exposed parts of the grand 
stand, and was glad that I had taken a shawl 
with me, in which I wrapped myself as if I had 
been on shipboard. This, 1 told my English 
friends, was tho more civilized form of the 
Indian's blanket. My report of the weather 
does not say much for the English May, but it 
is generally agreed upon that this is a backward 
and unpleasant spring. 



66 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

After my return from the race we went to a 
lai'ge dinner at Mr. Phelps's house, where we 
met Mr. Browninq: afrain, and the Lord Chan- 
cellor Ilerschel, among others. Then to Mrs. 
Cyril Flower's, one of the most sumptuous 
houses in London ; and after that to Lady 
Kothschild's, another of the private palaces, with 
ceilings lofty as firmaments, and walls that 
might have been copied from the NeweTerusalem. 
There was still another great and splendid re- 
ception at Lady Dalhonsie's, and a party at Mrs. 
Smith's, but w^e were both tired enough to be 
willing to go home after what may be called a 
pretty good day's work at enjoying ourselves. 

We had been a fortnight in London, and 
were now inextricably entangled in the meshes 
of the golden web of London social life. 



II. 

The reader wlio glances over these papers, 
and, finding them too full of small details and 
the lesser personal matters which belong natu- 
rally to private correspondences, turns impa- 
tiently from them, has my entire sympathy and 
good-will. He is not one of those for whom 
these pages are meant. Having no particular 
interest in the writer or his affairs, he does not 
care for the history of " the migrations from tlie 
blue bed to the brown " and tlic many Mistress 
Quicklyisms of circumstantial narrative. Yet 
all this may be pleasant reading to relatives and 
friends. 

But I must not forget that a new generation 
of readers has come into being since I have been 
writing for the public, and that a new genera- 
tion of aspiring and brilliant authors has grown 
into general recognition. The dome of Boston 
State House, which is the centre of my little uni- 
verse, was glittering in its fresh golden pellicle 



68 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

before I had reached the scriptural boundary of 
life. It has lost its lustre now, and the years 
which have dulled its surface have whitened the 
dome of that fragile structure in which my con- 
sciousness holds the session of its faculties. 
Time is not to be cheated. It is easy to talk of 
perennial youth, and to toy with the flattering 
fictions which every ancient personage accepts as 
true so far as he himself is concerned, and laughs 
at as foolish talk when he hears them applied to 
others. When, in my exidting immaturity, I 
wrote the lines not mikuown to the reading pub- 
lic mider the name of '' The Last Leaf," I spoke 
of the possibility that I myself might linger on 
the old bough until the buds antl blossoms of a 
new spring were opening and spreading all 
ai'ound me. I am not as yet the solitary surW- 
vor of my literary contemporaries, and, remem- 
bering who my few coevals are, it may well be 
hoped that I shall not be. But I feel lonely, 
very lonely, in the pages through which I wan- 
der. These are new names in the midst of 
which I find my own. In another sense I am 
very far from alone. I have daily assurances 
that I have a constituency of known and un- 



EPSOM. 69 

known personal friends, whose indulgence I have 
no need of asking. I know there are readers 
enough who will be pleased to follow me in my 
brief excursion, because I am myself., and will 
demand no better reason. If I choose to write 
for them, I do no injury to those for whom my 
personality is an object of indifference. They 
will find on every shelf some publications which 
are not intended for them, and which they pre- 
fer to let alone. No person is expected to help 
himself to everything set before him at a pub- 
lic table. I will not, therefore, hesitate to go 
on with the simple story of our Old World expe- 
riences. 

Thanks to my Indian blanket, — my shawl, I 
mean, — I found myself nothing the worse for 
my manifold adventures of the 27th of May. 
The cold wind sweeping over Epsom downs re- 
minded me of our own chilling easterly breezes ; 
especially the northeasterly ones, which are to 
me less disagreeable than the southeasterly. 
But the poetical illusion about an English May, 

" Zephyr with Aurora playing, 
As he met her once a-Maying-," 

and all that, received a shrewd thrust. Zephyr 



60 OUR HCXDRED DAYS IS EUROPE. 

ought to have come in an ulster, and offered Aii- 
TorA a warm petticoat. However, in spite of all 
difficulties, I brought off my recollections of the 
Derby of 1SS6 iu triumph, and am now waiting 
for the colored porti*ait of Ormonde with Archer 
on his back, — Archer, the winner of live Derby 
races, one of which was won by the American 
hoi*se Iroquois. ^Vhen that picture, which I am 
daily expecting, arrives, I shall have it framed 
and hung by the side of Herring's picture of 
Plenipotentiary, the horse I saw win the Derby 
in IS 34. These two, with an old porti*ait of the 
gi-eat Eclipse, who, as my engraving of 1780 
(^Stubbs's) says, *'was never beat, or ever had 
occation for ^YTiip or Spur," will constitnte my 
entire sporting gallery. I have not that vicious 
and demoralizing love of horse-flesh which 
makes it next to impossible to find a perfectly 
honest hippophile. But a racer is the i-ealiza- 
tion of an ideal quadruped. — 

*' A pard-like spirit, beautiful and shrift : " 

SO ethereal, so bird-like, that it is no wonder that 
the horse about whom those old story-tellers lied 
so stoutly, — telling of his running a mile in a 
minute, — was colled Flying Childers. 



LONDON. 61 

The roses in Mrs. Pfeiffer's garden were 
hardly out of flower when I hmched with her at 
her pretty villa at Putney. There I met Mr. 
Browning, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mrs. Ritchie, 
Miss Anna Swanwick, the translator of ^scliy- 
lus, and other good company, besides that of my 
entertainer. 

One of my very agreeable experiences was a 
call from a gentleman with whom I had corre- 
sponded, but whom I had never met. This was 
Mr. John Bellows, of Gloucester, publisher, 
printer, man of letters, or rather of words ; for 
he is the author of that truly remarkable little 
manual, " The Bona Fide Pocket Dictionary of 
the French and English Languages." To the 
review of this little book, which is dedicated to 
Prince Lucien Bonaparte, the " London Times " 
devoted a full column. I never heard any one 
who had used it speak of it except with admira- 
tion. The modest Friend may be surprised to 
find himself at full length in my pages, but those 
who know the little miracle of typography, its 
conciseness, completeness, arrangement, will not 
wonder that I was gratified to see the author, 
who sent it to me, and who has written me most 



62 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

interesting letters on the local antiquities of 
Gloucester and its neighborhood. 

We lunched that day at Lad}' Camperdown's, 
where we were happy to meet Miss Frances 
Power Cobbe. In the afternoon we went by in- 
vitation to a " tea and talk *' at the Reverend 
My. llaweis's, at Chelsea. We found the house 
close packed, but managed to get through the 
rooms, shaking innumerable hands of the rever- 
end gentleman's parishioners and other visitors. 
It was very well arranged, so as not to be too 
fatiguing, and we left tlie cordial gathering in 
good condition. We drove home with Bishop 
and Mrs. EUicott. 

After this Sir James Paget called, and took 
me to a small and early dinner-party ; and 

A went with my secretary, the young lady 

of whom I have spoken, to see " Human Na- 
ture,'' at Drury Lane Theatre. 

On the following day, after dining with Lady 
Holland (wife of Sir Henry, niece of Macaulay), 
we went across the street to our neighbor's. Lady 
Stanley's. There was to be a great meeting of 
schoolmistresses, in whose work her son, the 
Honorable Lyidph Stanley, is deeply interested. 



LONDON. 68 

Alas ! The schoolma'ams wore just leaving as 
we entered the door, and all we saw of them was 
tlie trail of their descending robes. I was very 
sorry for this, for I have a good many friends 
among our own schoolmistresses, — friends whom 
I never saw, but know through the kind words 
they have addressed to me. 

No place in London looks more reserved and 
exclusive tlian Devonshire House, standing back 
behind its high wall, extending along Piccadilly. 
There is certainly nothing in its exterior which 
invites intrusion. We had the pleasure of tak- 
ing tea in the great house, accompanying our 
American friend. Lady ITarcourt, and were gra- 
ciously received and entertained by Lady Ed- 
ward Cavendish. Like the other great houses, 
it is a museum of paintings, statues, objects of 
interest of all sorts. It must be confessed that 
it is pleasanter to go througli the rooms with 
one of the ladies of the household than under 
the lead of a liveried servant. Lord llartington 
came in while we were there. All the men who 
are distinguished in political life become so famil- 
iar to the readers of " Punch " in their carica- 
tures, that we know them at sight. Even those 



64 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

who can claim no such public distinction are occa- 
sionally the subjects of the caricaturist, as some 
of us have found out for ourselves. A good car- 
icature, which seizes the prominent features and 
gives them the character Nature hinted, but did 
not fully carry out, is a work of genius. Nature 
herself is a remorseless caricaturist, as oiu* daily 
intercourse with our fellow men and women 
makes evident to us, and as is curiously illus- 
trated in the figures of Charles Lebrun, showing 
the relations between certain human faces and 
those of various animals. Hardly an English 
statesman in bodily presence could be mistaken 
by any of '' Punch's " readers. 

On the same day that we made this quiet 
visit we attended a great and ceremonious assem- 
bly. There were two parts in the programme, 
in the first of which I was on the stage solus, — 
that is, without my companion ; in the second 
we were together. This day, Saturday, the 
29th of May, was observed as the Queen's birth- 
day, although she was born on the 24th. Sir 
William Ilarcourt gave a great dinner to the 
officials of his department, and later in tlie even- 
ing Lady Rosebery held a reception at the For- 



LONDON. — OFFICIAL RECEPTIONS. Q^ 

eign Office. On both these occasions everybody 
is expected to be in court dress, but my host told 
me I might present myself in ordinary evening 
dress. I thought that I might feel awkwardly 
among so many guests, all in the wedding gar- 
ments, knee-breeches and the rest, without which 
I ventured among them. I never passed an 
easier evening in any company than among these 
official personages. Sir William took me under 
the shield of his ample presence, and answered 
all my questions about the various notable per- 
sonages at his table in a way to have made my 
fortune if I had been a reporter. From the din- 
ner I went to Mrs. Gladstone's, at 10 Downing 

Street, where A called for me. She had 

found a very small and distinguished company 
there, Prince Albert Victor among the rest. At 
half past eleven we walked over to the Foreign 
Office to Lady Rosebery's reception. 

Here Mr. Gladstone was of course the centre 
of a group, to which I was glad to add myself. 
His features are almost as familiar to me as my 
own, for a photograph of him in his library has 
long stood on my revolving bookcase, with a 
large lens before it. He is one of a small circle 



Q6 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of individuals in whom I have had and still have 
a special personal interest. The year 1809,^j 
which introduced me to atmospheric existence,! 
was the birth-year of Gladstone, Tennyson, Lord 
Houghton, and Darwin. It seems like an honor 
to have come into the world in such company, but 
it is more likely to promote humility than vanity 
in a common mortal to find himself coeval with 
such illustrious personages. Men born in the^ 
same year watch each other, especially as the \ 
sands of life begin to run low, as we can imagine | 
so many damaged hour-glasses to keep an eye on I 
each other. Women, of course, never know who / 
are their contemporaries. 

Familiar to me as were the features of Mr. 
Gladstone, I looked upon him with astonishment. 
For he stood before me with epaulets on his 
shoulders and a rapier at his side, as military in 
his aspect as if he had been Lord Wolseley, to 
whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. 
I was fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. 
Gladstone on a still more memorable occasion, 
and can afford to leave saying what were my 
impressions of the very eminent statesman until 
I speak of that occasion. 



LONDON. — OFFICIAL RECEPTIONS. 67 

A great number of invitations had been given 
out for the reception at Lady Rosebery's, — 
over two thousand, my companion heard it said. 
Whatever the number was, the crowd was very 
great, — so great that one might well feel 
alarmed for the safety of any delicate person 
who was in the pack which formed itself at one 
place in the course of the evening. Some ob- 
struction must have existed afronte^ and the vis 
a tergo became fearful in its pressure on those 
who were caught in the jam. I began thinking 
of the crushes in which I had been caught, or 
which I had read and heard of : the terrible 
time at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty, 
where some forty persons were squeezed or tram- 
pled to death ; the Brooklyn Theatre and other 
similar tragedies ; the crowd I was in at the 
unveiling of the statue on the column of the 
Place Vendome, where I felt as one may suppose 
Giles Corey did when, in his misery, he called 
for "more weight" to finish him. But there 
was always a deus ex machina for us when we 
were in trouble. Looming up above the crowd 
was the smiling and encouraging countenance of 
the ever active, always present, always helpful 



68 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Mr. Smalley. He cleared a breathing space be- 
fore us. For a short time it was really a for- 
midable wedging together of people, and if a 
lady had fainted in the press, she might have 
run a serious risk before she could have been 
extricated. No more " marble halls " for us, if 
we had to undergo \hQ peine forte et dure as the 
condition of our presence ! We were both glad 
to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and 
move freely about the noble apartments. Lady 
Rosebery, who was kindness itself, would have 
had us stay and sit down in comfort at the sup- 
per-table, after the crowd had thinned, but we 
were tired with all we had been through, and 
ordered our carriage. Ordered our carriage I 

" I can call spirits from the vasty deep." . . . 
"J5Mf will they come when you do call for them ? '' 

The most formidable thing about a London 
party is getting away from it. *' C'est le dernier 
pas quEcoute." A crowd of anxious persons in 
retreat is hanging about the windy door, and the 
breezy stairway, and the airy hall. 

A stentorian voice, hard as that of Rhadaman- 
thus, exclaims, — 

" Lady Vere de Vere's carriage stops the 
way ! " 



LONDON. 69 

If my Lady Vere de Vere is not on hand, and 
that pretty quickly, off goes her carriage, and 
the stern voice bawls again, — 

" Mrs. Smith's carriage stops the way ! " 
Mrs. Smith's particular Smith may be worth 
his millions and live in his marble palace ; but 
if Mrs. Smith thinks her coachman is going to 
stand with his horses at that door until she ap- 
pears, she is mistaken, for she is a minute late, 
and now the coach moves on, and Rhadamanthus 
calls aloud, — 

" Mrs. Brown's carriage stops the way ! " 
Half the lung fevers that carry off the great 
people are got waiting for their carriages. 

I know full well that many readers would be 
disappointed if I did not mention some of the 
grand places and bring in some of the great 
names that lend their lustre to London society. 
We were to go to a fine musical party at Lady 
Rothschild's on the evening of the 30th of May. 
It happened that the day was Sunday, and if we 
had been as punctilious as some New England 
Sabbatarians, we might have felt compelled to 
decline the tempting invitation. But the party 
was given by a daughter of Abraham, and in 



TO OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

every Hebrew household the true Sabbath was 
over. We were content for that evening to shel- 
ter ourselves under the old dispensation. 

Tlie party, or concert, was a very brilliant 
affair. Patti sang to us, and a tenor, and a 
violinist played for us. llow we two Americans 
came to be in so favored a position I do not 
know ; all 1 do know is that we were shown to 
our places, and found them very agreeable ones. 
In the same row of seats was the Prince of 
Wales, two chairs off from A 's seat. Di- 
rectly in front of A was the Princess of 

Wales, " in ruby velvet, with six rows of pearls 
encircling her throat, and two more strings fall- 
ing quite low ; " and next her, in front of me, 
the startling presence of Lady de Grey, formerly 
Lady Lonsdale, and before that Gladys Herbert. 
On the other side of the Princess sat the Grand 
Duke JNIichael of Russia. 

As we are among the grandest of the gran- 
dees, I nuist enliven my sober account with an 
extract from my companion's diary : — 

'' There were several great beauties there, 
Lady Claude Hamilton, a queenly blonde, being 
one. Minnie Stevens Paget had with her the 



WINDSOR. 71 

pretty Miss Langdon, of Now York. Royalty 
had one room for supper, with its attendant 
lords and ladies. Lord Rothschild took me 
down to a long table for a sit-down supper, — 
there were some thirty of us. The most superb 
pink orchids were on the table. The [Thane] of 

sat next me, and how he stared before he 

was introduced ! . . . This has been the finest 
party we have been to, sitting comfortably in 
such a beautiful ball-room, gazing at royalty in 
the flesh, and at the shades of departed beauties 
on the wall, by Sir Joshua and Gainsborough. 
It was a new experience to find that the royal 
lions fed up-stairs, and mixed animals below ! " 

A visit to Windsor had been planned, under 
the guidance of a friend whose kindness had al- 
ready shown itself in various forms, and who, 
before we left England, did for us more than we 
could have thought of owing to any one person. 
This gentleman, Mr. Willett, of Brighton, called 
with Mrs. Willett to take us on the visit which 
had been arranged between us. 

Windsor Castle, which everybody knows, or 
can easily learn, all about, is one of the largest 
of those huge caverns in which the descendants 



72 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of the original cave men, when they have reached 
the height of human grandeur, delight to shelter 
themselves. It seems as if such a great lioUow 
quarry of rock would strike a chill through 
every tenant, but modern improvements reach 
even the palaces of kings and queens, and the 
regulation temperature of the castle, or of its in- 
habited portions, is fixed at sixty-five degrees of 
Fahrenheit. The royal standard was not float- 
ing from the tower of the castle, and everything 
was quiet and lonely. We saw all we wanted 
to, — pictures, furniture, and the rest. My 
namesake, the Queen's librarian, was not there 
to greet us, or I should have had a pleasant 
half-hour in the library with that very polite 
gentleman, whom I had afterwards the pleasure 
of meeting in London. 

After going through all the apartments in the 
castle that we cared to see, or our conductress 
cared to show us, we drove in the park, along 
the " three-mile walk," and in the by-roads 
leading from it. The beautiful avenue, the open 
spaces with scattered trees here and there, made 
this a most delightful excursion. I saw many 
fine oaks, one about sixteen feet of honest girth, 



WINDSOR. -THE HAWTHORN. 73 

but no one which was very remarkable. I wished 
I could have compared the handsomest of them '. 
with one in Beverly, which I never look at with- j 
out taking my hat off. This is a young tree, / 
with a future before ifc, if barbarians do not 
meddle with it, more conspicuous for its spread 
than its circumference, stretching not very far 
from a hundred feet from bough-end to bough- 
end. I do not think I saw a specimen of the 
British Quercus rohur of such consummate 
beauty. But I know from Evelyn and Strutt 
what England has to boast of, and I will not 
challenge the British oak. 

Two sensations I had in Windsor park, or 
forest, for I am not quite sure of the boundary 
which separates them. The first was the lovely 
sight of the hawthorn in full bloom. I had al- 
ways thought of the hawthorn as a pretty shrub, 
growing in hedges ; as big as a currant bush or 
a barberry bush, or some humble plant of that 
character. I was surprised to see it as a tree, 
standing by itself, and making the most deli- 
cious roof a pair of young lovers could imagine 
to sit under. It looked at a little distance like 
a young apple-tree covered with new-fallen snow. 



74 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I shall never see the word hawthorn in poetry 
again without the image of the snowy but far from 
chilling canopy rising before me. It is the very 
bower of young love, and must have done more 
than any growth of the forest to soften the doom 
brought upon man by the fruit of the forbidden 
tree. No wonder that 

" In tlie spring: a young: man's fancy lightly tnrns to thonghts 
of love," 

with the object of his affections awaiting him in 
this boudoir of nature. What a pity that Zekle, 
who courted Huldy over the apples she was 
peeling, could not have made love as the bucolic 
youth does, when 

" Every shepherd tells liis tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale " I 

(I will have it Zot?e-tale, in spite of Warton's 
comment.) But I suppose it does not make so 
much difference, for love transmutes the fruit 
in Huldy's lap into the apples of the Hesperides. 
In this way it is that the associations with the 
poetry we remember come up when we find our- 
selves surrounded by English scenery. The 
great poets build temples of song, and fill them 
with images and symbols which move us almost 



WINDSOR. -THE CUCKOO. iFy 

to adoration ; the lesser minstrels fill a panel or 
gild a cornice here and there, and make our 
hearts glad with glimpses of beauty. I felt all 
this as I looked around and saw the hawthorns 
in full bloom, in the openings among the oaks 
and other trees of the forest. Presently I heard 
a sound to which I had never listened before, 
and which I have never heard since : — 

Coooo — coooo ! 

Nature had sent one cuckoo from her aviary 
to sing his double note for me, that I might not 
pass away from her pleasing show without once 
hearing the call so dear to the poets. It was 
the last day of spring. A few more days, and 
the solitary voice might have been often heard ; 
for the bird becomes so common as to furnisli 
Shakespeare an image to fit " the skipping 
king : " — 

" He was but as the cuckoo is in June, 
Heard, not regarded." 

For the lyric poets the cuckoo is " companion of 
the spring," " darling of the spring ; " coming 
with the daisy, and the primrose, and the blos- 
soming sweet-pea. Where the sound came from 
I could not tell ; it puzzled Wordsworth, with 



76 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 
younger eyes than mine, to find whence issued 

" that cry 
Wliich made me look a thoiisand w ays 
In bush, and tree, and sky.' ' 

Only one hint of the prosaic troubled my emo- 
tional delight: I could not help thinking how 
capitally the little rogue imitated the cuckoo 
clock, with the sound of which I was pretty well 
acquainted. 

On our return from Windsor we had to cfet 
ready for another great dinner with our Minis- 
ter, Mr. Phelps. As we are in the habit of con- 
sidering our great officials as public property, 
and as some of my readers want as many glimpses 
of high life as a decent regard to republican 
sensibilities will permit, I will borrow a few 
words from the diary to which I have often re- 
ferred : — 

"The Princess Louise w^as there with the 
Marquis, and I had the best opportunity of see- 
ing how they receive royalty at private houses. 
Mr. and Mrs. Phelps went down to the door to 
meet her the moment she came, and then Mr. 
Phelps entered the drawing-room with the Prin- 
cess on his arm, and made the tour of the room 



LONDON. 11 

with her, she bowing and speaking to each one 
of us. Mr, Goschen took me in to dinner, and 
Lord Lome was on my other side. All of the 
flowers were of the royal color, red. It was a 
grand dinner. . . . The Austrian Ambassador, 
Count Karoli, took Mrs. Phelps in [to dinner], 
his position being higher than that of even the 
Duke [of Argyll], who sat upon her right." 

It was a very rich experience for a single day : 
the stately abode of royalty, with all its mani- 
fold historical recollections, the magnificent av- 
enue of forest trees, the old oaks, the hawthorn 
in full bloom, and the one cry of the cuckoo, 
calling me back to Nature in her spring-time 
freshness and glory ; then, after that, a great 
London dinner-party at a house where the kind 
host and the gracious hostess made us feel at 
home, and where we could meet the highest peo- 
ple in the land, — the people whom we who live 
in a simpler way at home are naturally pleased 
to be with under such auspices. What of all 
this shall I remember longest ? Let me not 
seem ungrateful to my friends who planned the 
excursion for us, or to those who asked us to the 
brilliant evening entertainment, but I feel as 



78 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Wordsworth felt about the cuckoo, — he will 
survive all the other memories. 

' And I can listen to thee yet, 
Can lie upon the plain 
And listen, till I do beget 
That golden time again." 

Nothing is more hackneyed than an American's 
description of his feelings in the midst of the 
scenes and objects he has read of all his days, 
and is looking upon for the first time. To each 
of us it appears in some respects in the same 
way, but with a difference for every individual. 
We may smile at Irving' s emotions at the first 
sight of a distinguished Englishman on his own 
soil, — the ingenious Mr. Roscoe, as an earlier 
generation would have called him. Our tourists, 
who are constantly going forward and back be- 
tween England and America, lose all sense of 
the special distinctions between the two coun- 
tries which do not bear on their personal con- 
venience. Happy are those who go with unworn, 
unsatiated sensibilities from the New World to 
the Old ; as happy, it may be, those who come 
from the Old World to the New, but of that I 
cannot form a judgment. 



THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 79 

On the first day of June we called by appoint- 
ment upon Mr. Peel, the Speaker of the House 
of Commons, and went through the Houses of 
Parliament. We began with the train-bearer, 
then met the housekeeper, and presently were 
joined by Mr. Palgrave. The " Golden Trea- 
sury " stands on my drawing-room table at home, 
and the name on its title-page had a perfectly 
familiar sound. These accidental meetings with 
persons whom we know by their publications 
are very pleasant surprises. 

Among other things to which Mr. Palgrave 
called our attention was the death-warrant of 
Charles the First. One name in the list of sign- 
ers naturally fixed our eyes upon it. It was 
that of John Dixwell. A lineal descendant of 
the old regicide is very near to me by family 
connection. Colonel Dixwell having come to this 
country, married, and left a posterity, which has 
resmned the name, dropped for the sake of safety 
at the time when he, Goffe, and Whalley were 
in concealment in various parts of New Eng- 
land. 

We limched with the S^ieaker, and had the 
pleasure of the company of Archdeacon Farrar. 



^y 



80 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

In the aftornooii wo wont to a toa at a very 
grand house, where, as my companion says in 
her cliar}^ *' it took full six mon in rod satin 
knee-brooches to lot us in." Another grand per- 
sonage asked us to dine with her at her country 
place, but wo wore too full of engagements. In 
the evening we went to a large reception at Mr. 
Gosse's. It was pleasant to meet artists and 
scholars, — the kind of company to which we 
are much used in our jesthetic city. I found 
our host as agreeable at home as he was when in 
Boston, where he became a favorite, both as a 
looturor and as a visitor. 

Another day we visited Stafford House, where 
Lord Eonald Gower, himself an artist, did the 
honors of the house, showing us the pictures and 
sculptures, his own included, in a very obliging 
and agrooablo way. I have often taken note of 
the resomblances of living persons to the por- 
traits and statues of their remote ancestors. In 
showing us the portrait of one of his own far- 
back progenitors. Lord Konald placed a photo- 
graph of himself in the corner of the frame. 
The likeness was so close that the photograph 
might seem to have been copied from the paint- 



LONDON. 81 

in^, the dress only beiii^i^ changed. Tlic Duke of 
Sutherland, wlio had just come back from Amer- 
ica, complained that the dinners and lunches had 
used him up. I was fast learning how to sym- 
pathize with him. 

Then to Grosvenor House to see the pictures. 
I best remember Gainsborough's beautiful Blue 
Boy, conunonly so called, from the color of his 
dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the 
Tragic Muse, which everybody knows in engrav- 
ings. We lunched in clerical company that day, 
at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's, with 
the Archbishop of York, the Reverend Mr. 

Haweis, and others as guests. I told A that 

she was not suHKciently impressed with her po- 
sition at the side of an arclibishop ; she was 
not crumhlmg bread in her ncivous excitement. 
The company did not seem to remember Sydney 
Smith's remark to the young lady next him at a 
dinner-party : " My dear, I see you are nervous, 
by your crumbling your bread as you do. / 
always crumble bread when 1 sit by a bishop, 
and when I sit by an archbishop 1 crumble 
bread with both hands." That evening I had 
the pleasure of dining with the distinguished 



82 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our 
own country, through my son, who has intro- 
duced me to many agreeable persons of his own 
generation, with whose companionship I am glad 
to mend the broken and merely fragmentary 
circle of old friendships. 

The 3d of June was a memorable day for us, 
for on the evening of that day we were to hold 
our reception. If Dean Bradley had proposed 
our meeting our guests in the Jerusalem cham- 
ber, I should hardly have been more astonished. 
But these kind friends meant what they said, 
and put the offer in such a shape that it was 
impossible to resist it. So we sent out our 
cards to a few hundreds of persons, — those 
who we thought might like invitations. I was 
particularly desirous that many members of the 
medical profession whom I had not met, but 
who felt well disposed towards me, should be 
at this gathering. The meeting was in every 
respect a success. I wrote a prescription for as 
many baskets of champagne as would be con- 
sistent with the well-being of our guests, and 
such light accompaniments as a London company 
is wont to expect under similar circumstances. 



LONDON. — OUR RECEPTION. 83 

My own recollections o£ the evening-, unclouded 
by its festivities, but confused by its multitudi- 
nous succession of introductions, are about as 
definite as the Duke of Wellington's alleged 
monosyllabic description of the battle of Water- 
loo. But A writes in her diary : " From 

nine to twelve we stood, receiving over three 
hundred people out of the four hundred and fifty 
we invited.'* As I did not go to Europe to visit 
hospitals or museums, I might have missed seeing 
some of those professional brethren whose names 
I hold in honor and whose writings are in my 
library. If any such failed to receive our cards 
of invitation, it was an accident which, if I had 
known, I should have deeply regretted. So 
far as we could judge by all we heard, our 
unpretentious party gave general satisfaction. 
Many different social circles were represented, 
but it passed off easily and agreeably. I can 
say this more freely, as the credit of it belongs 
so largely to the care and self-sacrificing efforts 
of Dr. Priestley and his charming wife. 

I never refused to write in the birthday book 
or the album of the humblest schoolgirl or 
schoolboy, and I could not refuse to set my 



84 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

name, with a verse from one of my poems, in 
tlie album of the Princess of Wales, which was 
sent me for that purpose. It was a nice new 
book, with only two or three names in it, and 
those of musical composers, — Rubinstein's, I 
think, was one of them, — so that I felt honored 
by the great lady's request. I ought to describe 
the book, but I only remember that it was quite 
large and sumptuously elegant, and that I copied 
into it the last verse of a poem of mine called 
" The Chambered Nautilus," as I have often 
done for plain republican albums. 

The day after our simple reception was nota- 
ble for three social events in which we had our 
part. The first was a lunch at the house of 
Mrs. Cyril Flower, one of the finest in London, 
— Surrey House, as it is called. Mr. Brown- 
ing, who seems to go everywhere, and is one of 
the vital elements of London society, was there 
as a matter of course. Miss Cobbe, many of 
whose essays I have read with great satisfaction, 
though I cannot accept all her views, was a guest 
whom I was very glad to meet a second time. 

In the afternoon we went to a garden-party 
given by the Princess Louise at Kensington 



LONDON. — A GARDEN-PARTY. 85 

Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might 
be taken for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all 
the festive occasions which I attended, the gar- 
den-parties were to me the most formidable. 
They are all very well for young people, and for 
those who do not mind the nipping and eager 
air, with which, as I have said, the climate of 
England, no less than that of America, falsifies 
all the fine things the poets have said about 
May, and, I may add, even June. We wan- 
dered about the grounds, spoke with the great 
people, stared at the odd ones, and said to our- 
selves, — at least I said to myself, — with Ham- 
let, 

" The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold." 

The most curious personages were some East In- 
dians, a chocolate-colored lady, her husband, and 
children. The mother had a diamond on the 
side of her nose, its setting riveted on the in- 
side, one might suppose ; the effect was peculiar, 

far from captivating. A said that she 

should prefer the good old-fashioned nose-ring, 
as we find it described and pictured by travel- 
lers. She saw a great deal more than I did, of 
course. I quote from her diary : " The little 



So OCR IirXDKFD DAYS IX KTROPE. 

\\asicvn ohildron luado tlioir native salaam totho 
Prinooss by prostrating' tlunnsolvos tiat on their 
little stomaehs in front ot' her, putting their 
IkuuIs between her feet, pushing- them aside, and 
kissing the print of her feet ! *' 

1 really believe one or both of ns would have 
run serious risks of eatehing our •" death o' 
eold," if we had waited for our own carriage, 
whieh seemed forever in eoming- forward. The 
good Lady Holland, who was more than onee 
oiu- guardian angel, brought us home in hers. 
So ^^e got warmed up at our own hearth, and 
were ready in due season for tlie large and tine 
dinner-party at Archdeacon Farrar's, where, 
among- other guests, were ^[rs. Phelps, our Min- 
ister's wife, who is a great favorite alike with 
Americans and English, Sir John Millais, Mr. 
Tyndall, and other inteivsting people. 

I am sorry that we could not have visited 
Xewstead Abbey. I had a letter fi*om ^Mr. 
Thornton Lothrop to Colonel AVebb, the present 
pivprietor, with whom we lunched. 1 have 
spoken of the pleasure 1 had when 1 came ac- 
cidentally upon pei*sons with whose name and 
fame I had long beeu acquainted. A similar 



LONDON, 87 

imprcfiHion was that wlii-h I received when I 
found rnysf'lf in the company of the bearer of 
an old hiHtoric name. When my host at the 
luneh introduced a stat^dydookin^ gentleman as 
Sir Kenehn J>>igby, it gave me a start, as if a 
ghost ha^l stood before me. I recovered myself 
immediately, however, for there was nothing of 
the impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart 
personage who bore the name. I wanted to ask 
him if he carried any of his anr^str>r's " powder 
of sympathy " about witli him. Many, but not 
all, of my readers remember that famous man's 
famous preparation. When used to cure a 
wound, it was applied to the weapon that made 
it ; the pai-t was })ound up so as to bring the 
edges of the wound together, and by the won- 
drous influence of the sympathetic powder the 
healing prof;ess trjok place in the kindest possi- 
ble manner. Sir Kenelm, the ancestor, was a 
gallant soldier, a grand gentleman, and the hus- 
band of a wonderfully beautiful wife, whose 
charms he tried to preserve from the ravages of 
time by various experiments. lie was also the 
homccopathist of his day, the Elisha Perkins 
(metallic tractors} of his generation. Tlie 



88 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

" mind cure " people might adopt him as one 
of their precursors. 

I heard a curious statement which was illus- 
trated in the person of one of the gentlemen we 
met at this table. It is that English sport- 
ing men are often deaf on one side, in conse- 
quence of the noise of the frequent discharge of 
their guns affecting the right ear. This is a 
very convenient infirmity for gentlemen who in- 
dulge in slightly aggressive remarks, but when 
they are hit back never seem to be conscious at 
all of the riposte^ — the return thrust of the 
fencer. 

Dr. AUchin called and took me to a dinner, 
where I met many professional brothers, and en- 
joyed myself highly. 

By this time every day was pledged for one 
or more engagements, so that many very attrac- 
tive invitations had to be declined. I will not 
lollow the days one by one, but content myself 
with mentioning some of the more memorable 
visits. I had been invited to the Rabelais Club, 
as I have before mentioned, by a cable message. 
This is a club of which the late Lord Houghton 
was president, and of which I am a member, as 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 89 

are several other Americans. I was afraid that 
the gentlemen who met, 

*' To laugh and shake in Rabelals's easy-chair,'* 

might be more hilarious and demonstrative in 
their mirth than I, a sober New Englander in 
the superfluous decade, might find myself equal 
to. But there was no uproarious jollity ; on the 
contrary, it was a pleasant gathering of literary 
people and artists, who took their pleasure not 
sadly, but serenely, and I do not remember a 
single explosive guffaw. 

Another day, after going all over Dudley 
House, including Lady Dudley's boudoir, " in 
light blue satin, the prettiest room we have 

seen," A says, we went, by appointment, to 

Westminster Abbey, where we spent two hours 
under the guidance of Archdeacon Farrar. I 
think no part of the Abbey is visited with so 
much interest as Poets' Corner. We are all 
familiarly acquainted with it beforehand. We 
are all ready f or " O rare Ben Jonson ! " as we 
stand over the place where he was planted stand- 
ing upright, as if he had been dropped into a 
post-hole. We remember too well the foolish 
and flippant mockery of Gay's " Life is a Jest." 



90 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

If I were dean of the cathedral, I should be 
tempted to alter the e/to a G, Then we could 
read it without contempt ; for life is a gest, an 
achievement, — or always ought to be. West- 
minster Abbey is too crowded with monuments 
to the illustrious dead and those who have been 
considered so in their day to produce any other 
than a confused impression. When we visit 
the tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides, no side- 
lights interfere with the view before us in the 
field of mental vision. We see the Emperor ; 
Marengo, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Saint Helena, 
come before us, with him as their central figure. 
So at Stratford, — the Cloptons and the John 
a Combes, with all their memorials, cannot make 
us lift our eyes from the stone which covers the 
dust that once breathed and walked the streets 
of Stratford as Shakespeare. 

Ah, but here is one marble countenance that 
I know full well, and knew for many a year in 
the flesh ! Is there an American who sees the 
bust of LouG^fellow amons: the effi2:ies of the 
great authors of England without feeling a thrill 
of pleasure at recognizing the features of his 
native fellow-countryman in the Valhalla of his 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 91 

ancestral fellow-countrymen ? There arc many 
memorials in Poets' Corner and elsewhere in the 
Abbey which could be better spared than that. 
Too many that were placed there as luminaries 
have become conspicuous by their obscurity in 
the midst of that illustrious company. On the 
whole, the Abbey produces a distinct sense of 
being overcrowded. It appears too much like 
a lapidary's store-room. Look up at the lofty 
roof, which we willingly pardon for shutting out 
the heaven above us, — at least in an average 
London day ; look down at the floor, and think 
of what precious relics it covers ; but do not 
look around you with the hope of getting any 
clear, concentrated, satisfying effect from this 
great museum of gigantic funereal bricabrac. 
Pardon me, shades of the mighty dead ! I had 
something of this feeling, but at another hour I 
might perhaps be overcome by emotion, and 
weep, as my fellow-countryman did at the grave 
of the earliest of his ancestors. I should love 
myself better in that aspect than I do in this 
cold-blooded criticism ; but it suggested itself, 
and as no flattery can soothe, so no censure can 
wound, " the dull, cold ear of death." 



92 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Of course we saw all the sights of the Abbey 
in a hurried way, yet with such a guide and ex- 
positor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' 
visit was worth a whole day with an undiscrim- 
inating verger, who recites his lesson by rote, 
and takes the life out of the little mob that fol- 
lows him round by emphasizing the details of 
his lesson, until '' Patience on a monument " 
seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants 
and what he does not want, the nearest emblem 
of himself he can think of. Amidst all the im- 
posing recollections of the ancient edifice, one 
impressed me in the inverse ratio of its impor- 
tance. The Archdeacon pointed out the little 
holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys 
of the choir used to play marbles, before 
America was discovered, probably, — centuries 
before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive 
glimpse of a living past, like the graffiti of Pom- 
peii. I find it is often the accident rather than 
the essential which fixes my attention and takes 
hold of my memory. This is a tendency of 
which I suppose I ought to be ashamed, if 
we have any right to be ashamed of those 
idiosyncrasies which are ordered for us. It is 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 93 

the same tendency which often leads us to prefer 
the picturesque to the beautiful. Mr. Gilpin 
liked the donkey in a forest landscape better than 
the liorse. A touch of imperfection interferes 
with the beauty of an object and lowers its level 
to that of the picturesque. The accident of the 
holes in the stone of the noble building, for the 
boys to play marbles with, malces me a boy 
again and at home with them, after looking with 
awe upon the statue of Newton, and turning 
with a shudder from the ghastly monument of 
Mrs. Nightingale. 

What a life must be that of one whose years 
are passed chiefly in and about the great Abbey I 
Nowhere does Macbeth's expression " dusty 
death " seem so true to all around us. The dust 
of those who have been lying century after cen- 
tury below the marbles piled over them, — the 
dust on the monuments they lie beneath ; the 
dust on the memories those monuments were 
raised to keep living in the recollection of pos- 
terity, — dust, dust, dust, everywhere, and we 
ourselves but shapes of breathing dust moving 
amidst these objects and remembrances ! C'ome 
away I The good Archdeacon of the " Eternal 



94 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Hope " has aslced us to take a cup of tea with 
him. The tea-cup will be a cheerful substitute 
for the fuueral uru, aud a freshly uiade iufusion 
of the fragraut leaf is oue of the best thiugs in 
the world to lay the dust of sad reflections. 

It is a somewhat fatiguing pleasure to go 
through the Abbey, in spite of the intense in- 
terest no one can help feeliug. But my day had 
but just begun when the two hours we had de- 
voted to the visit were over. At a quarter before 
eight, my friend Mr. Frederick Locker called 
for me to go to a dinner at the Literary Club. 
1 was particidarly pleased to dine with this asso- 
ciation, as it reminded me of our own Saturday 
Club, which sometimes goes by the same name 
as the London one. They complimented me 
with a toast, and I made some kind of a reply. 
As I never went prepared with a speech for any 
such occasion, I take it for granted that I 
thanked the company in a way that showed my 
gratitude rather than my eloquence. And now, 
the dinner being over, my day was fairly begun. 

I'his was to be a memorable date in the rec- 
ord of the year, one long to be remembered in 
the political history of Great Britain. For ou 



MR. GLADSTONE'S SPEECH. 95 

this day, the 7th of June, Mr. Gladstone was to 
make his great speech on the Irish question, and 
the division of the House on the Government 
of Irehmd Bill was to take ])lacc. The whole 
country, to the corners of its remotest colony, 
was looking forward to the results of this even- 
ing's meeting of Parliament. The kindness of 
the Speaker had furnished me with a ticket, en- 
titling me to a place among the " distinguished 
guests," which I presented without modestly 
questioning my right to the title. 

The pressure for entrance that evening was 
very great, and I, coming after my dinner with 
the Literary Club, was late upon the ground. 
The places for " distinguislied guests " were al- 
ready filled. But all England was in a conspi- 
racy to do everything possible to make my visit 
agreeable. I did not take up a great deal of 
room, — I might be put into a scat with the am- 
bassadors and foreign ministers. And among 
them I was presently installed. It was now 
between ten and eleven o'clock, as nearly as I 
recollect. The House had been in session since 
four o'clock. A gentleman was speaking, who 
was, as my unknown next neighbor told me, Sir 



96 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Michael Hicks-Beach, a leading member, as we 
all know, of the opposition. When he sat down 
there was a hush of expectation, and presently 
Mr. Gladstone rose to his feet. A great burst 
of applause welcomed him, lasting more than a 
minute. His clean-cut features, his furrowed 
cheeks, his scanty and whitened hair, his well- 
shaped but not extraordinary head, all familiar- 
ized by innumerable portraits and emphasized in 
hundreds of caricatures, revealed him at once to 
every spectator. His great speech has been uni- 
versally read, and I need only speak of the way 
in which it was delivered. His manner was 
forcible rather than impassioned or eloquent; 
his voice was clear enough, but must have 
troubled him somewhat, for he had a small bot- 
tle from which he poured something into a glass 
from time to time and swallowed a little, yet I 
heard him very well for the most part. In the 
last portion of his speech he became animated 
and inspiriting, and his closing words were ut- 
tered with an impressive solemnity : " Think, I 
beseech you, think well, think wisely, think not 
for a moment, but for the years that are to 
come, before you reject this bill." 



MR. GLADSTONE'S SPEECH. 97 

After the burst of applause which followed 
the conclusion of Mr. Gladstone's speech, the 
House proceeded to the division on the question 
of passing the bill to a second reading. While 
the counting of the votes was going on there was 
the most intense excitement. A rumor ran round 
the House at one moment that the vote was go- 
ing in favor of the second reading. It soon be- 
came evident that this was not the case, and 
presently the result was announced, giving a ma- 
jority of thirty against the bill, and practically 
overthrowing the liberal administration. Then 
arose a tumult of applause from the conserva- 
tives and a wild confusion, in the midst of which 
an Irish member shouted, " Three cheers for the 
Grand Old Man ! " which were lustily given, 
with waving of hats and all but Donnybrook 
manifestations of enthusiasm. 

I forgot to mention that I had a very advanta- 
geous seat among the diplomatic gentlemen, and 
was felicitating myself on occupying one of the 
best positions in the House, when an usher 
politely informed me that the Russian Ambassa- 
dor, in whose place I was sitting, had arrived, 
and that I must submit to the fate of eviction. 



98 OUR HUNDRED DAYS. IN EUROPE. 

Fortunately, there were some steps close by, on 
one of which I found a seat almost as good as 
the one I had just left. 

It was now two o'clock in the morning, and 
I had to walk home, not a vehicle being attain- 
able. I did not know my way to my headquar- 
ters, and I had no friend to go with me, but I 
fastened on a stray gentleman, who proved to be 
an ex-member of the House, and who accom- 
panied me to 17 Dover Street, where I sought 
my bed with a satisfying sense of having done 
a good day's work and having been well paid 
for it. 



III. 

On the 8th of June we visited the Record 
Office for a sight of the Domesday Book and 
other ancient objects of interest there preserved. 
As I looked at this too faithful memorial of an 
inexorable past, I thought of the battle of Hast- 
ings and all its consequences, and that reminded 
me of what I have long remembered as I read 
it in Dr. Eobert Knox's " Races of Men." Dr. 
Knox was the monoculous Waterloo surgeon, 
with whom I remember breakfasting, on my 
first visit to England and Scotland. His cele- 
brity is less owing to his book than to the un- 
fortunate connection of his name with the un- 
forgotten Burke and Hare horrors. This is his 
language in speaking of Hastings ; " . . . that 
bloody field, surpassing far in its terrible results 
the unhappy day of Waterloo. From this the 
Celt has recovered, but not so the Saxon. To this 
day he feels, and feels deeply, the most disas- 
trous day that ever befell his race ; here he was 



100 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

trodden down by the Norman, whose iron heel 
is on him yet. ... To this day the Saxon race 
in England have never recovered a tithe of 
their rights, and probably never will." 

The Conqueror meant to have a thorough 
summing up of his stolen property. The Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle says, — I quote it at second 
hand, — " So very straitly did he cause the sur- 
vey to be made, that there was not a single hyde, 
nor a yardland of ground, nor — it is shameful 
to say wluit he thought no shame to do — was 
there an ox or a cow, or a pig passed by, and 
that was not down in the accounts, and then all 
these writings were brought to him." The 
"looting" of England by William and his 
"twenty thousand thieves," as Mr. Emerson 
calls his army, was a singularly methodical pro- 
ceeding, and Domesday Book is a searching in- 
ventory of their booty, movable and immovable. 

From this reminder of the past we turned to 

the remembrances of home ; A going to 

dine with a transplanted Boston friend and 
other ladies from that blessed centre of New 
England life, while I dined with a party of 
gentlemen at my friend Mr. James Russell Low- 
ell's. 



DINNER AT MR. LOWELL'S. 101 

I had looked forward to this meeting with 
high expectations, and they were abundantly 
satisfied. I knew that Mr. Lowell must gather 
about him, wherever he might be, the choicest 
company, but what his selection would be I was 
curious to learn. I found with me at the table 
my own countrymen and his, Mr. Smalley and 
Mr. Henry James. Of the other guests, Mr. 
Leslie Stephen was my only old acquaintance in 
person ; but Du Maurier and Tenniel I have met 
in my weekly " Punch " for many a year ; Mr. 
Lang, Mr. Oliphant, Mr. Townsend, we all know 
through their writings ; Mr. Burne Jones arid 
Mr. Alma Tadema, through the frequent repro- 
ductions of their works in engravings, as well as 
by their paintings. If I could report a din- 
ner-table conversation, I might be tempted to 
say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. 
I like well enough conversation which floats'^ 
safely over the shallows, touching bottom at ' 
intervals with a commonplace incident or truism 
to push it along ; I like better to find a few , 
fathoms of depth under the surface; there isj 
a still higher pleasure in the philosophical dis-1 
course which calls for the deep sea line to reach 



102 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

bottom ; but best of all, when one is in the right 
mood, is the contact of intelligences when they 
are off soundings in the ocean of thought. Mr. 
Oliphant is what many of us call a mystic, and 
I found a singular pleasure in listening to him. 
This dinner at Mr. Lowell's was a very remark- 
able one for the men it brought together, and I 
remember it with peculiar interest. My enter- 
tainer holds a master-key to London society, 
and he opened the gate for me into one of its 
choicest preserves on that evening. 

I did not undertake to renew my old acquaint- 
ance with hospitals and museums. I regretted 
that I could not be with my companion, who 
went through the Natural History Museum with 
the accomplished director, Professor W. H. 
Flower. One old acquaintance I did resuscitate. 
For the second time I took the hand of Charles 
O'Byrne, the celebrated Irish giant of the last 
century. I met him, as in my first visit, at the 
Eoyal College of Surgeons, where I accompa- 
nied Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson. He was in the 
condition so longed for by Sydney Smith on a 
very hot day ; namely, with his flesh taken off, 
and sitting, or rather standing, in his bones. 



VISIT TO TENNYSON. 103 

The skeleton measures eight feet, and the living 
man's height is stated as having been eight feet 
two, or four inches, by different authorities. His 
hand was the only one I took, either in England 
or Scotland, which had not a warm grasp and a 
hearty welcome in it. 

A went with Boston friends to see " Faust " 

a second time, Mr. Irving having offered her the 
Royal box, and the polite Mr. Bram Stoker serv- 
ing the party with tea in the little drawing-room 
behind the box ; so that she had a good time 
while I was enjoying myself at a dinner at Sir 
Henry Thompson's, where I met Mr. Gladstone, 
Mr. Browning, and other distinguished gentle- 
men. These dinners of Sir Henry's are well 
known for the good company one meets at them, 
and I felt myself honored to be a guest on this 
occasion. 

Among the pleasures I had promised myself 
was that of a visit to Tennyson, at the Isle of 
Wight. I feared, however, that this would be 
rendered impracticable by reason of the very 
recent death of his younger son, Lionel. But 
I learned from Mr. Locker-Lampson, whose 
daughter Mr. Lionel Tennyson had married, 



104 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

that the poet would be pleased to see me at his 
place, Farringford ; and by the kind interven- 
tion of Mr. Locker-Lampson, better known to 
the literary world as Frederick Locker, arrange- 
ments were made for my daughter and myself to 
visit him. I considered it a very great favor, 
for Lord Tennyson has a poet's fondness for the 
tranquillity of seclusion, which many curious 
explorers of society fail to remember. Lady 
Tennyson is an invalid, and though nothing 
could be more gracious than her reception of us 
both, I fear it may have cost her an effort which 
she would not allow to betray itself. Mr. Hal- 
lam Tennyson and his wife, both of most pleas- 
ing presence and manners, did everything to 
make our stay agreeable. I saw the poet to the 
best advantage, under his own trees and walking 
over his own domain. He took delight in pointing 
out to me the finest and the rarest of his trees, 
— and there were many beauties among them. 
I recalled my morning's visit to Whittier at Oak 
Knoll, in Danvers, a little more than a year ago, 
when he led me to one of his favorites, an aspir- 
ing evergreen which shot up like a flame. I 
thought of the graceful American elms in front of 



VISIT TO TENNYSON. 105 

Longfellow's house and the sturdy English elms 
that stand in front of Lowell's. In this garden 
of England, the Isle of Wight, where every- 
thing grows with such a lavish extravagance of 
greenness that it seems as if it must bankrupt 
the soil before autumn, I felt as if weary eyes 
and overtasked brains might reach their happiest 
haven of rest. We all remember Shenstone's 
epigram on the pane of a tavern window. If we 
find our " warmest welcome at an inn,'/we find 
our most soothing companionship in the trees 
among which we have lived, some of which we 
may ourselves have planted. We lean against 
them, and they never betray our trust ; they 
shield us from the sun and from the rain ; their 
spring welcome is a new birth, which never loses 
its freshness; they lay their beautiful robes at 
our feet in autumn ; in winter they " stand and 
wait," emblems of patience and of truth, for 
they hide nothing, not even the little leaf-buds 
which hint to us of hope, the last element in 
their triple symbolism.^ 

This digression, suggested by the remem- 
brance of the poet under his trees, breaks my 
narrative, but gives me the opportunity of pay- 



lOG OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

ing a debt of gratitude. For I have owned 
many beautiful trees, and loved many more out- 
side of my own leafy harem. Those who wiite 
verses have no special claim to be lovers of 
trees, but so far as one is of the poetical tern- \ 
perament he is likely to be a tree-lover. Poets I 
have, as a rule, more than the average nervous \ 
sensibility and irritability. Trees have no j 
nerves. They live and die without suffering, | 
without self -questioning or self-reproach. ( They | 
have the divine gift of silence.) They cannot ^ 
obtrude upon the solitary moments when one is 
to himself the most agreeable of companions. 
The whole vegetable world, even " the meanest 
flower that blows," is lovely to contemplate. 
What if creation had paused there, and you or 
I had been called upon to decide whether self- 
conscious life should be added in the form of the 
existing animal creation, and the hitherto peace- 
ful universe should come under the rule of 
Nature as we now know her, 

*' red in tooth and claw " ? 

Are we not glad that the responsibility of the 
decision did not rest on us ? 

I am sorry that I did not ask Tennyson to 



VISIT TO TENNYSON. 107 

read or repeat to nic some lines of his own. 
Hardly any one perfectly understands a pocjni 
but the poet himself. One naturally loves his 
own poem as no one else can. It fits the mental 
mould in which it was cast, and it will not 
exactly fit any other. For this reason I had 
rather listen to a poet reading his own verses 
than hear the best elocutionist that ever spouted 
recite them. He may not have a good voice or 
enunciation, but he puts his heart and his inter- 
penetrative intelligence into every line, word, 
and syllable. I should have liked to hear Ten- 
nyson read such lines as 

" Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere ; " 

and in spite of my good friend Matthew Ar- 
nold's in tcrrorem^ I should have liked to hear 
Macaulay read, 

' ' And Aulus the Dictator 

Stroked Aiister's raven mane," 

and other good mouthable lines, from the '' Lays 
of Ancient Kome." Not less should I like to 
hear Mr. Arnold himself read the passage be- 
ginning, — 

" In his cool hall with liag'jj^ard eyes 
The Roman nohlo lay." 



108 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

The next day Mrs. Hallam Tennyson took 

A in her pony cart to see Alum Bay, The 

Needles, and other objects of interest, while I 
wandered over the grounds with Tennyson. 
After lunch his carriage called for us, and we 
were driven across the island, through beautiful 
scenery, to Veutnor, where we took the train to 
Hyde, and there the steamer to Portsmouth, from 
which two hours and a half of travel carried 
us to London. 

My first visit to Cambridge was at the invita- 
tion of Mr. Gosse, who asked me to spend Sun- 
day, the 13th of June, with him. The rooms in 
Neville Court, Trinity College, occupied by Sir 
William Vernon Harcourt when lecturing at 
Cambridge, were placed at my disposal. The 
room I slept in was imposing with the ensigns 
armorial of the Harcourts and others which 
ornamented its walls. I had great delight in 
walking through the quadrangles, along the 
banks of the Cam, and beneath the beautiful 
trees which border it. Mr. Gosse says that I 
stopped in the second court of Clare, and looked 
around and smiled as if I were bestowing my 



CAMBRIDGE. 109 

benediction. He was mistaken : I smiled as if 
I were receiving a benediction from my dear old 
grandmother ; for Cambridge in New England 
is my mother town, and Harvard University in 
Cambridge is my Alma Mater. She is the 
daughter of Cambridge in Old England, and my 
relationship is thus made clear. 

Mr. Gosse introduced me to many of the 
younger and some of the older men of the uni- 
versity. Among my visits was one never to be 
renewed and never to be forgotten. It was to 
the Master of Trinity, the Reverend William 
Hepworth Thompson. I hardly expected to 
have the privilege of meeting this very distin- 
guished and greatly beloved personage, famous 
not alone for scholarship, or as the successor of 
Dr. Whewell in his high office, but also as hav- 
ing said some of the wittiest things which we 
have heard since Voltaire's pour encourager les 
autres. I saw him in his chamber, a feeble old 
man, but noble to look upon in all " the monu- 
mental pomp of age." He came very near be- 
longing to the little group I have mentioned as 
my coevals, but was a year after us. Gentle, 
dignified, kindly in his address as if I had been 



110 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

his schoolmate, he left a very charming impres- 
sion. He gave me several mementoes of my 
visit, among them a beautiful engraving of Sir 
Isaac Newton, representing him as one of the 
handsomest of men. Dr. Thompson looked as 
if he could not be very long for this world, but 
his death, a few weeks after my visit, was a 
painful surprise to me. I had been just in time 
to see " the last of the great men " at Cam- 
bridge, as my correspondent calls him, and I 
was very grateful that I could store this memory 
among the hoarded treasures I have been laying 
by for such possible extra stretch of time as may 
be allowed me. 

My second visit to Cambridge will be spoken 
of in due season. 

While I was visiting Mr. Gosse at Cambridge, 

A was not idle. On Saturday she went to 

Lambeth, where she had the pleasure and honor 
of shaking hands with the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury in his study, and of looking about the 
palace with Mrs. Benson. On Sunday she went 
to the Abbey, and heard " a broad and liberal 
sermon " from Archdeacon Farrar. Our young 
lady-secretary stayed and dined with her, and 



VISIT TO DRURY LANE THEATRE. Ill 

after dinner sang to her. " A peaceful, happy- 
Sunday," A says in her diary, — not less 

peaceful, I suspect, for my being away, as my 
callers must have got many a " not at 'ome " 
from young Robert of the multitudinous buttons. 

On Monday, the 14th of June, after getting 
ready for our projected excursions, we had an 
appointment which promised us a great deal 
of pleasure. Mr. Augustus Harris, the enter- 
prising and celebrated manager of Drury Lane 
Theatre, had sent us an invitation to occupy a 
box, having eight seats, at the representation of 
"Carmen." We invited the Priestleys and 
our Boston friends, the Shimminses, to take 
seats with us. The chief singer in the opera was 
Marie Roze, who looked well and sang well, and 
the evening went off very happily. After the 
performance we were invited by Mr. Harris to 
a supper of some thirty persons, where we were 
the special guests. The manager toasted me, 
and I said something, — I trust appropriate ; 
but just what I said is as irrecoverable as the 
orations of Demosthenes on the sea-shore, or the 
sermons of St. Francis to the beasts and birds. 

Of all the attentions I received in England, 



112 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

this was, j)(m1i:i|)s, the Ic^ast to bo anticipated or 
droaiiied of. To bo foted and toastod and to 
mako a s])cech in Drnry Lano Tlioatro would 
not have entered into my iiiglitiest eoneepiions, 
if I had made out a i)rogranimo beforeliand. It 
is a singularly gratifying recolleetion. Drnry 
Lano Theatre is so full of associations with 
literature, with the great actors and actresses of 
the past, with the famous beauties who have 
stood behind the footlights and the splendid 
audiences that have sat before them, that it is 
an admirable nucleus for romend)rances to clus- 
ter around, it was but a vague spot in memory 
before, but now it is a bright centre for other 
images of the past. That one evening seems to 
make me the possessor of all its traditions from 
the time when it rose from its ashes, when By- 
ron's poem was written and recited, and when 
the brothers Smith gave us the " Address with- 
out a Plia3nix," and all those exquisite parodies 
which make us feel towards their originals some- 
what as our dearly remembered Tom A])i)leton 
did when he saiil, in praise of some real green 
turtle soup, that it was almost as good as mock. 
With much regret we gave up an invitation 



CAMBRIDGE. 113 

we had accepted to go to Durdans to dine with 
Lord Rosebcry. We must have felt very tired 
indeed to make so great a sacrifice, but we had 
to be up until one o'clock getting ready for the 
next day's journey ; writing, packing, and at- 
tending to what we left behind us as well as 
what was in prospect. 

On the morning of Wednesday, June 16th, 
Dr. Donald Macalister called to attend us on 
our second visit to Cambridge, where we were 
to be the guests of his cousin, Alexander Mac- 
alister, Professor of Anatomy, who, with Mrs. 
Macalister, received us most cordially. There 
was a large luncheon-party at their house, to 
which we sat down in our travelling dresses. In 
the evening they had a dinner-party, at which 
were present, among others, Professor Stokes, 
President of the Koyal Society, and Professor 
Wright. We had not heard much talk of politi- 
cal matters at the dinner-tables where we had 

been guests, but A sat near a lady who was 

very earnest in advocating the Irish side of the 
great impending question. 

The 17th of June is memorable in the annals 



114 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of my country. On that day of the year 1775 
the battle of Bunker's Hill was fought on the 
height I sec from the window of my library, 
where I am now writing. The monument raised 
in memory of our defeat, which was in truth a 
victory, is almost as much a part of the furniture 
of the room as its chairs and tables ; outside, 
as they are inside, furniture. But the 17th of 
June, 188G, is memorable to me above all the 
other anniversaries of that day I have known. 
For on that day I received from the ancient 
University of Cambridge, England, the degree 
of Doctor of Letters, " Doctor Litt.," in its ab- 
breviated academic form. The honor was an 
unexpected one ; that is, until a short time be- 
fore it was conferred. 

Invested with the academic gown and cap, I 
repaired in due form at the appointed hour to 
the Senate Chamber. Every seat was filled, 
and among the audience were youthful faces in 
large numbers, looking as if they were ready for 
any kind of outbreak of enthusiasm or hilarity. 

The first degree conferred was that of LL. D., 
on Sir W. A. White, G. C. M., G. C. B., to 
whose long list of appended initials it seemed 



CAMBRIDGE. 115 

like throwing a perfume on the violet to add 
three more letters. 

When I was called up to receive my honorary 
title, the young voices were true to the promise 
of the young faces. There was a great noise, 
not hostile nor unpleasant in its character, in 
answer to which I could hardly help smiling my 
acknowledgments. In presenting me for my de- 
gree the Public Orator made a Latin speech, 
from which I venture to give a short extract, 
which I would not do for the woild if it were 
not disguised by being hidden in the mask of 
a dead language. But there will be here and 
there a Latin scholar who will be pleased with 
the way in which the speaker turned a compli- 
ment to the candidate before him, with a refer- 
ence to one of his poems and to some of his 
prose works. 

'''' Juvat nuper audlvisse eum cvjus carmen 
prope primum ' Solium ultimum ' nominatum 
est^ folia adhuc plura e scriniis suis esse prola- 
turum. Novimus quanto lepore descripserit 
colloquia ilia antemeridiana, symposia ilia so- 
hria ct severa, sed eadem /estiva et faceta^ in 
quihus totiens mutata persona^ modo poeta^ 



116 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

modo professor^ modo princeps et arbiter, lo- 
quendl, inter convlvas siios regnat.^' 

I had no sooner got tlirongli listening to the 
speech and receiving my formal sentence as 
Doctor of Letters than the young voices broke 
out in fresh clamor. There were cries of " A 
speech ! a speech ! " mingled with the title of a 
favorite poem by John Howard Payne, having 
a certain amount of coincidence with the sound 
of my name. The play upon the word was not 
absolutely a novelty to my ear, but it was good- 
natured, and I smiled again, and perhaps made 
a faint inclination, as much as to say, " I hear 
you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that 
I am standing on my dignity, especially now 
since a new degree has added a moral cubit to 
my stature." Still the cries went on, and at 
last I saw nothing else to do than to edge back 
among the silk gowns, and so lose myself and 
be lost to the clamorous crowd in the mass of 
dignitaries. It was not indifference to the 
warmth of my welcome, but a feeling that I had 
no claim to address the audience because some of 
its younger members were too demonstrative. I 
have not forgotten my very cordial reception, 



CAMBRIDGE. 117 

which made me feel almost as much at home 
in the old Cambridge as in the new, where I 
was born and took my degrees, academic, profes- 
sional, and honorary. 

The university town left a very deep impres- 
sion upon my mind, in which a few grand ob- 
jects predominate over the rest, all being of a 
delightful character. I was fortunate enough to 
see the gathering of the boats, which was the 
last scene in their annual procession. The 
show was altogether lovely. The pretty river, 
about as wide as the Housatonic, I should 
judge, as that slender stream winds through 
" Canoe Meadow," my old Pittsfield residence, 
the gaily dressed people who crowded the 
banks, the flower-crowned boats, with the gal- 
lant young oarsmen who handled them so skil- 
fully, made a picture not often equalled. The 
walks, the bridges, the quadrangles, the historic 
college buildings, all conspired to make the 
place a delight and a fascination. The library 
of Trinity College, with its rows of busts by 
Roubiliac and Woolner, is a truly noble hall. 
But beyond, above ail the rest, the remembrance 
of King's College Chapel, with its audacious 



118 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

and richly wrought roof and its wide and lofty 
windows, glowing with old devices in colors 
which are ever fresh, as if just from the furnace, 
holds the first place in my gallery of Cambridge 
recollections. 

I cannot do justice to the hospitalities which 
were bestowed upon us in Cambridge. Profes- 
sor and Mrs. Macalister, aided by Dr. Donald 
Macalister, did all that thoughtful hosts could 
do to make us feel at home. In the after- 
noon the ladies took tea at Mr. Oscar Brown- 
ing's. In the evening we went to a large dinner 
at the invitation of the Vice-Chancellor. Many 
little points which I should not have thought of 

are mentioned in A 's diary. I take the 

following extract from it, toning down its viva- 
city more nearly to my own standard : — 

" Twenty were there. The Master of St. 
John's took me in, and the Vice-Chancellor was 
on the other side. . . . The Vice-Chancellor 
rose and returned thanks after the meats and 
before the sweets, as usual. I have now got 
used to this proceeding, which strikes me as ex- 
traordinary. Everywhere here in Cambridge, 
and the same in Oxford, I believe, they say 



CAMBRIDGE. \\^ 

grace and give thanks. A gilded ewer and flat 
basin were passed, with water in the basin to 
wash with, and we all took our turn at the bath ! 
Next to this came the course with the finger- 
bowls ! . . . Why two baths?" 

On Friday, the 18th, I went to a breakfast at 
the Combination Room, at which about fifty 
gentlemen were present. Dr. Sandys taking the 
chair. After the more serious business of the 
morning's repast was over. Dr. Macalister, at 
the call of the chairman, arose, and proposed 
my welfare in a very complimentary way. I of 
course had to respond, and I did so in the words 
which came of their own accord to my lips. 
After my unpremeditated answer, which was 
kindly received, a young gentleman of the uni- 
versity, Mr. Heitland, read a short poem, of 
which the following is the title : — 

LINES OF GREETING TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL 
HOLMES. 

AT BEEAKFAST IN COMBINATION BOOM, ST. JOHn's COLLEGE, 
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND. 

I wish I dared quote more than the last two 
verses of these lines, which seemed to me, not 
unused to giving and receiving complimentary 



120 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

tributes, singularly liappy, and were so consid- 
ered by all who heard them. I think I may 
venture to give the two verses referred to : — 

" By all sweet memory of tlie saints and sages 
Who wrought among- us in tlie days of yore ; 
By youths who, turning now life's early pages, 
llipeu to match the worthies gone before : 

"On us, son of England's greatest daughter, 
A kindly word from heart and tongue bestow ; 
Then chase the sunsets o'er the western water, 
And be:u' our blessing with you as you go." 

1 need not say that I left the English Cam- 
bridge with a heart full of all grateful and 
kindly emotions. 

I must not forget that I found at Cambridge, 
very pleasantly established and successfully prac- 
tising his profession, a former student in the 
dental department of our Harvard Medical 
School, Dr. George Cunningham, who used to 
attend my lectures on anatomy. In the garden 
behind the quaint old house in which he lives 
is a large medlar-tree, — the first I remember 
seeing. 

On this same day we bade good-by to Cam- 
bridge, and took the two o'clock train to Oxford, 



OXFORD. 121 

where we arrived at half past five. At this first 
visit we were to be the guests of Professor Max 
Miiller, at his fine residence in Norliain Gar- 
dens. We met there, at dinner, Mr. llerkomer, 
whom we have recently had with us in Boston, 
and one or two others. In the evening we had 
music ; the professor playing on the piano, his 
two daugliters, Mrs. Conybeare and her unmar- 
ried sister, singing, and a young lady playing the 
violin. It was a very lovely family picture ; a 
pretty house, surrounded by attractive scenery ; 
scholarship, refinement, simple elegance, giving 
distinction to a home which to us seemed a pat- 
tern of all we could wisli to see beneath an Eng- 
lish roof. It all comes back to me very sweetly, 
but very tenderly and sadly, for the voice of the 
elder of the two sisters who sang to us is heard 
no more on earth, and a deep shadow has fallen 
over the household we found so bright and 
cheerful. 

Everything was done to mak(; me enjoy my 
visit to Oxford, but I was suffering from a 
severe cold, and was paying the penalty of too 
much occupation and excitement. I missed a 
great deal in consequence, and carried away a 



122 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

less distinct recollection of this magnificent seat 
of learning than of the sister university. 

If one wishes to know the magic of names, 
let him visit the places made memorable by the 
lives of the illustrious men of the past in the 
Old World. As a boy I used to read the po- 
etry of Pope, of Goldsmith, and of Johnson. 
How could I look at the Bodleian Library, or 
wander beneath its roof, without recalling the 
lines from " The Vanity of Human Wishes " ? 

" When fii*st the college rolls receive liis name, 
Tlie youngs enthusiast quits his ease for fame ; 
Resistless burns the fever of renown, 
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown : 
O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread, 
And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head." 

The last line refers to Roger Bacon. " There 
is a tradition that the study of Friar Bacon, 
built on an arch over the bridge, will fall when 
a man greater than Bacon shall pass under it. 
To prevent so shocking an accident, it was 
pulled down many years since." We shall meet 
with a similar legend in another university city. 
Many persons have been shy of these localities, 
who were in no danger whatever of meeting the 
fate threatened by the prediction. 



OXFORD. 123 

Wc passed through the T>()(llol!iu Tjibrary, 
only glaiKjing at a fow of its choicest treasures, 
arnoiif^- wliic-h the cx([uisit(?ly ilhiiiiinated missals 
were cspc(;ially tcinj)ting- objects of study. It 
was almost like a inoc^kcry to sec them opened 
and closed, without liaving tlic; time to study 
their wonderfid miniature paintings. A walk 
tlirough tlie grounds of Magdahm C^ollc^gci, un- 
der the guidance of the j)resident of tliat col- 
lege, showed us some of the fine trees for which 
1 was always looking. One of tlieso, a wych- 
elm (Scotcli (dm of some books), was so largo 
tliat I insisted on liaving it nu^asured. A string 
was procured and carefully carried round the 
trunk, above the spread of the roots and below 
tliat of tli(; branches, so as to give; the smallest 
circumference. 1 was curious to know how the 
size of the tiunk of this tree would compai'O 
with that of the tiunks of some of our larg(;st 
New England elms. I have measured a good 
many of these. About sixteen feet is the mea- 
surement of a hu'ge elm, like that on Boston 
Common, which all middle-aged people remem- 
ber. From twenty-two to twenty-three feet is 
the ordinary maxinmm of the very largest trees. 



124 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I never found but one exceed it : that was the 
great Springfield ehn, which h)okcd as if it might 
have been formed by the coalescence from the 
earliest period of growth, of two young trees. 
When I measured this in 1837, it was twenty- 
four feet eight inches in circumference at five 
feet from the ground ; growing larger above and 
below. I remembered this tree well, as we 
measured the string which was to tell the size of 
its English rival. As we came near the end of 
the string, I felt as I did when I was looking 
at the last dash of Ormonde and The Bard at 
Epsom. — Twenty feet, and a long piece of 
string left. — Twenty - one. — Twenty - two. — 
Twenty-three. — An extra heartbeat or two. — 
Twenty - four ! — Twenty - five and six inches 
over I ! — The Sj^ringfield elm may have grown 
a foot or more since I measured it, fifty years 
ago, but the tree at Magdiden stands ahead of 
all my old measurements. Many of the fine old 
trees, this in particular, may have been known 
in their younger days to Addison, whose favor- 
ite walk is still pointed out to the visitor. 

I would not try to compare the two university 
towns, as one might who had to choose between 



OXFORD. 125 

them. They have a noble rivalry, each honor- 
ing the other, and it would take a great deal of 
weighing one point of superiority against an- 
other to call either of them the first, except in 
its claim to antiquity. 

After a garden-party in the afternoon, a plea- 
sant evening at home., when the professor played 
and his daughter Beatrice sang, and a garden- 
party the next day, I found myself in somewhat 
better condition, and ready for the next move. 

At noon on the 23d of June we left for Edin- 
burgh, stopping over night at York, where we 
found close by the station an excellent hotel, 
and where the next morning we got one of the 
best breakfasts we had in our whole travelling 
experience. At York we wandered to and 
through a flower-show, and did the cathedral, 
as people do all the sights they see under the 
lead of a paid exhibitor, who goes through his 
lesson like a sleepy old professor. I missed see- 
ing the slab with the inscription miserrimus. 
There may be other stones bearing this sad su- 
perlative, but there is a story connected with 
this one, which sounds as if it might be true. 

In the year 1834, I spent several weeks in 



126 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Edinburgh. I was fascinated by the singular 
beauties of that " romantic town," which Scott 
called his own, and which holds his memory, 
with that of Burns, as a most precious part of 
its inheritance. The castle with the precipitous 
rocky wall out of which it grows, the deep ra- 
vines with their bridges, pleasant Calton Hill 
and memorable Holyrood Palace, the new town 
and the old town with their strange contrasts, 
and Arthur's Seat overlooking all, — these va- 
ried and enchanting objects account for the 
fondness with which all who have once seen 
Edinburgh will always regard it. 

We were the guests of Professor Alexander 
Crum Brown, a near relative of the late beloved 
and admired Dr. John Brown. Professor and 
Mrs. Crum Brown did everything to make our 
visit a pleasant one. We met at their house 
many of the best known and most distinguished 
people of Scotland. The son of Dr. John Brown 
dined with us on the day of our arrival, and 
also a friend of the family, Mr. Barclay, to 
whom we made a visit on the Sunday following. 
Among the visits I paid, none was more gratify- 
ing to me than one which I made to Dr. John 



EDINBURGH. 127 

Brown's sister. No man could leave a sweeter 
memory than the author of " Rab and his 
Friends," of " Pet Marjorie," and other writ- 
ings, all full of the same loving, human spirit. 
I have often exchanged letters with him, and I 
thought how much it would have added to the 
enjoyment of my visit if I could have taken his 
warm hand and listened to his friendly voice. 
I brought home with mo a precious little manu- 
script, written expressly for me by one who had 
known Dr. John Brown from the days of licr 
girlhood, in which his character appears in the 
same lovable and loving light as that which 
shines in every page he himself has written. 

On Friday, the 25th, I went to the hall of the 
university, where I was to receive the degree of 
LL. D. The ceremony was not unlike that at 
Cambridge, but had one peculiar feature: the 
separate special investment of the candidate 
with the hood^ which Johnson defines as "an 
ornamental fold which hangs down the back of 
a graduate." There were great numbers of stu- 
dents present, and they showed the same exu- 
berance of spirits as that which had forced me 
to withdraw from the urgent calls at Cambridge. 



128 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

The cries, if possible, were still louder and more 
persistent; they must have a speech and they 
would have a speech, and what could I do about 
it ? I saw but one way of pacifying a crowd as 
noisy and long-breathed as that which for about 
the space of two hours cried out, " Great is 
Diana of the Ephesians ! " So I stepped to the 
front and made a brief speech, in which, of 
course, I spoke of the '''' 2:)erfervidum ingenium 
Scotorumy A speech without that would have 
been like that " Address without a Phoenix " 
before referred to. My few remarks were well 
received, and quieted the shouting Ephesians of 
the warm-brained and warm-hearted northern 
university. It gave me great pleasure to meet 
my friend Mr. Underwood, now American con- 
sul in Glasgow, where he has made himself 
highly esteemed and respected. 

In my previous visit to Edinburgh in 1834, I 
was fond of rambling along under Salisbury 
Crags, and climbing the sides of Arthur's Seat. 
I had neither time nor impulse for such walks 
during this visit, but in driving out to dine at 
Nidrie, the fine old place now lived in by Mr. 
Barclay and his daughters, we passed under the 



EDINBURGH, 129 

crags and by the side of the great hill. I had 
never heard, or if I had I had forgotten, the 
name and the story of " Samson's Kibs." These 
are the cohimnar masses of rock which form the 
face of Salisbury Crags. There is a legend that 
one day one of these pillars will fall and crush 
the greatest man that ever passes under them. 
It is said that a certain professor was always 
very shy of "Samson's Ribs," for fear the 
prophecy might be fulfilled in his person. We 
were most hospitably received at Mr. Barclay's, 
and the presence of his accomplished and pleas- 
ing daughters made the visit memorable to both 
of us. There was one picture on their walls, 
that of a lady, by Sir Joshua, which both of us 
found very captivating. This is what is often 
happening in the visits we make. Some paint- 
ing by a master looks down upon us from its old 
canvas, and leaves a lasting copy of itself, to be 
be stored in memory's picture gallery. These 
surprises are not so likely to happen in the New 
World as in the Old. 

It seemed cruel to be forced to tear ourselves 
away from Edinburgh, where so much had been 
done to make us happy, where so much was left 



130 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

to see and enjoy, but we were due in Oxford, 
where I was to receive the last of the three de- 
grees with which I was honored in Great Bri- 
tain. 

Our visit to Scothind gave us a mere glimpse 
of the land and its people, but I have a very 
vivid recollection of both as I saw them on my 
first visit, when I made an excursion into the 
Highlands to Stirling and to Glasgow, where I 
went to church, and wondered over the uncouth 
ancient psalmody, which I believe is still re- 
tained in use to this day. I was seasoned to that 
kind of poetry in my early days by the verses 
of Tate and Brady, which I used to hear " en- 
tuned in the nose ful swetely," accompanied by 
vigorous rasping of a huge bass-viol. No won- 
der that Scotland welcomed the song of Burns I 

On our second visit to Oxford we were to be 
the guests of the Vice-Chancellor of the univer- 
sity. Dr. Jowett. This famous scholar and ad- 
ministrator lives in a very pleasant establish- 
ment, presided over by the Muses, but without 
the aid of a Vice-Chanccllorcss. The hospitality 
of this classic mansion is well known, and we 



OXFORD. 131 

added a second pleasant chapter to our previous 
experience under the roof of Professor Max 
Miiller. There was a little company there 
before us, including the Lord Chancellor and 
Lady Ilerschel, Lady Camilla Wallop, Mr. 
Browning, and Mr. Lowell. We were too late, 
in consequence of the bad arrangement of the 
trains, and had to dine by ourselves, as the 
whole party had gone out to a dinner, to which 
we should have accompanied them had we not 
been delayed. We sat up long enough to see 
them on their return, and were glad to get to 
bed, after our day's journey from Edinburgh to 
Oxford. 

At eleven o'clock on the following day we 
who were to receive degrees met at Balliol Col- 
lege, whence we proceeded in solemn procession 
to the Sheldonian Theatre. Among my com- 
panions on this occasion were Mr. John Bright, 
the Lord Chancellor Ilerschel, and Mr. Aldis 
Wright. I have an instantaneous photograph, 
which was sent me, of this procession. I can 
identify Mr. Bright and myself, but hardly any 
of the others, though many better acquainted 
with their faces would no doubt recognize them. 



132 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

There is a certain sensation in finding one's self 
invested with the academic gown, conspicuous by- 
its red facings, and the cap with its square top 
and depending tassel, which is not without its 
accompanying satisfaction. One can walk the 
streets of any of the university towns in his aca- 
demic robes without being jeered at, as I am 
afraid he would be in some of our own thor- 
oughfares. There is a noticeable complacency 
in the members of our Phi Beta Kappa society 
when they get the pink and blue ribbons in their 
buttonholes, on the day of annual meeting. How 
much more when the scholar is wrapped in those 
flowing folds, with their flaming borders, and 
feels the dignity of the distinction of which they 
are the symbol ! I do not know how Mr. John 
Bright felt, but I cannot avoid the impression 
that some in the ranks which moved from Bal- 
liol to the Sheldonian felt as if Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like the candidates 
for the degree of D. C. L. 

After my experience at Cambridge and Edin- 
burgh, I might have felt some apprehension 
about my reception at Oxford. I had always 
supposed the audience assembled there at the 



OXFORD. 133 

conferring of degrees was a more demonstrative 
one than that at any other of the universities, 
and I did not wish to be forced into a retreat by 
calls for a speech, as I was at Cambridge, nor 
to repeat my somewhat irregular proceeding of 
addressing the audience, as at Edinburgh. But 
when I found that Mr. John Bright was to be 
one of the recipients of the degree I felt safe, 
for if he made a speech I should be justified in 
saying a few words, if I thought it best ; and if 
he, one of the most eloquent men in England, 
remained silent, I surely need not make myself 
heard on the occasion. It was a great triumph 
for him, a liberal leader, to receive the testimo- 
nial of a degree from the old conservative uni- 
versity. To myself it was a graceful and pleas- 
ing compliment ; to him it was a grave and 
significant tribute. As we marched through the 
crowd on our way from Balliol, the people 
standing around recognized Mr. Bright, and 
cheered him vociferously. 

The exercises in the Sheldonian Theatre were 
more complex and lasted longer than those at 
the other two universities. The candidate 
stepped forward and listened to one sentence, 



134 OUR HUNDRED DAYS TN EUROPE. 

then made another move forward and listened 
to other words, and at last was welcomed to all 
the privileges conferred by the degree of Doctor 
of Common Law, which was announced as being 
bestowed upon him. Mr. Bright, of course, was 
received with immense enthusiasm. I had every 
reason to be gratified with my own reception. 
The only " chaffing " I heard was the question 
from one of the galleries, " Did he come in the 
One Hoss Shay ? " — at which there was a 
hearty laugh, joined in as heartily by myself. 
A part of the entertainment at this ceremony 
consisted in the listening to the reading of short 
extracts from the prize essays, some or all of 
them in the dead languages, which could not 
have been particularly intelligible to a large 
part of the audience. During these readings 
there were frequent interpellations., as the 
French call such interruptions, something like 
these : " That will do, sir ! " or " You had better 
stop, sir!" — always, I noticed, with the sir at 
the end of the remark. With us it would have 
been " Dry up ! " or "Hold on ! " At last came 
forward the young poet of the occasion, who 
read an elaborate poem, "Savonarola,'* which 



OXFORD. 135 

was listened to in most respectful silence, and 
loudly applauded at its close, as I thought, de- 
servedly. Prince and Princess Christian were 
among the audience. They were staying with 
Professor and Mrs. Max Miiller, whose hospital- 
ities I hope they enjoyed as much as we did. 

One or two short extracts from A 's diary 

will enliven my record : " The Princess had a 
huge bouquet, and going down the aisle had to 
bow both ways at once, it seemed to me : but 
then she has the Guelph spine and neck ! Of 
course it is necessary th^t royalty should have 
more elasticity in the frame than we poor ordi- 
nary mortals. After all this we started for a 
luncheon at All Souls, but had to wait (impa- 
tiently) for H. R. H. to rest herself, while our 
resting was done standing." 

It is a long while since I read Madame d'Ar- 
blay's Recollections, but if I remember right, 
standing while royalty rests its bones is one of 
the drawbacks to a maid of honor's felicity. 

" Finally, at near three, we went into a great 
luncheon of some fifty. There were different 
tables, and I sat at the one with royalty. The 
Provost of Oriel took me in, and Mr. Browning 



136 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

was on my other side. Finally, we went home 
to rest, but the others started out again to go to 
a garden-party, but that was beyond us." After 
all this came a dinner-party of twenty at the 
Vice-Chancellor's, and after that a reception, 
where among others we met Lord and Lady 
Coleridge, the lady resplendent in jewels. Even 
after London, this could hardly be called a day 
of rest. 

The Chinese have a punishment which con- 
sists simply in keeping the subject of it awake, 
by the constant teasing of a succession of indi- 
viduals employed for the purpose. The best of 
our social pleasures, if carried beyond the natu- 
ral power of physical and mental endurance, be- 
gin to approach the character of such a penance. 
After this we got a little rest ; did some mild 
sight-seeing, heard some good music, called on 
the Max Miillers, and bade them good-by with 
the warmest feeling to all the members of a 
household which it was a privilege to enter. 
There only remained the parting from our kind 
entertainer, the Vice - Chancellor, who added 
another to the list of places which in England 
and Scotland were made dear to us by hospital- 



OXFORD. 137 

ity, and are remembered as true homes to us 
while we were under their roofs. 

On the second day of July we left the Vice- 
Chancellor's, and went to the Randolph Hotel 
to meet our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, from 
Brighton, with whom we had an appointment of 
long standing. With them we left Oxford, to 
enter on the next stage of our pilgrimage. 



IV. 

It had been the intention of Mr. Willett to 
go with us to visit JVIi-. Eusldn, with whom he 
is in the most friendly relations. But a letter 
from Mr. Ruskin's sister spoke of his illness as 
being too serious for him to see company, and 
we reluctantly gave up this part of our plan. 

My first wish was to revisit Stratford-on- 
Avon, and as our travelling host was guided in 
everything by our inclinations, we took the cars 
for Stratford, where we arrived at five o'clock in 
the afternoon. It had been arranged before- 
hand that we should be the guests of Mr. Charles 
E. Flower, one of the chief citizens of Stratford, 
who welcomed us to his beautiful mansion in 
the most cordial way, and made us once more at 
home under an English roof. 

I well remembered my visit to Stratford in 
1834. The condition of the old house in which 
Shakespeare was born was very different from 
that in which we see it to-day. A series of pho- 



STRA TFORD-ON-A VON, 139 

tographs taken in different years shows its grad- 
ual transformation since the time when the old 
projecting angular sign-board told all who ap- 
proached " The immortal Shakespeare was born 
in this House.'* IIow near the old house came 
to sharing the fortunes of Jumbo under the man- 
agement of our enterprising countryman, Mr. 
Barnura, I am not sure ; but that he would have 
" traded " for it, if the proprietors had been will- 
ing, I do not doubt, any more than I doubt that 
he would make an offer for the Tower of Lon- 
don, if that venerable structure were in the mar- 
ket. The house in which Shakespeare was born 
is the Santa Casa of England. What with my 
recollections and the photographs with which I 
was familiarly acquainted, it had nothing very 
new for me. Its outside had undergone great 
changes, but its bare interior was little altered. 

My previous visit was a hurried one, — I took 
but a glimpse, and then went on my way. Now, 
for nearly a week I was a resident of Stratford- 
on-Avon. How shall I describe the perfectly 
ideal beauty of the new home in which I found 
myself ! It is a fine house, surrounded by de- 
lightful grounds, which skirt the banks of the 



140 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Avon for a considerable distance, and come close 
up to the enclosure of the Church of the Holy 
Trinity, beneath the floor of which lie the mortal 
remains of Shakespeare. The Avon is one of 
those narrow English rivers in which half a 
dozen boats might lie side by side, but hardly 
wide enough for a race between two rowing 
abreast of eacli other. Just here the river is 
comparatively broad and quiet, there being a 
dam a little lower down the stream. The wa- 
ters were a perfect mirror, as I saw them on one 
of the still days we had at Stratford. I do not 
remember ever before seeing cows walking with 
their legs in the air, as I saw them reflected in 
the Avon. Along the banks the young people 
were straying. I wondered if the youthful 
swains quoted Shakespeare to their lady-loves. 
Could they help recalling Romeo and Juliet? 
It is quite impossible to think of any human 
being growing up in this place which claims 
Shakespeare as its child, about the streets of 
which he ran as a boy, on the waters of which 
he must have often floated, without having his 
image ever present. Is it so ? There are some 
boys, from eight to ten or a dozen years old, fish- 



STRA TFORD-ON-A VON. 141 

ing in the Avon, close by the grounds of " Avon- 
bank," the place at which we are staying. I 
call to the little group. I say, "Boys, who 
was this man Shakespeare, people talk so much 
about ? " Boys turn round and look up with a 
plentiful lack of intelligence in their counte- 
nances. " Don't you know who he was nor what 
he was ? " Boys look at each other, but confess 
ignorance. — Let us try the universal stimulant 
of human faculties. "Here are some pennies 
for the boy that will tell me what that Mr. 
Shakespeare was." The biggest boy finds his 
tongue at last. " He was a writer, — he wrote 
plays." That was as much as I could get out of 
the youngling. I remember meeting some boys 
under the monument upon Bunker Hill, and 
testing their knowledge as I did that of the 
Stratford boys. " What is this great stone pil- 
lar here for ? " I asked. " Battle fought here, — 
great battle." "Who fought?" "Americans 
and British." (I never hear the expression 
Britishers.) "Who was the general on the 
American side ? " " Don' know, — General 
Washington or somebody." — What is an old 
battle, though it may have settled the destinies 



142 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of a nation, to the ganio of base-ball between 
the Boston and Chicago Nines which is to come 
off to-morrow, or to the game of marbles which 
Tom and Dick are just going to play together 
under the shadow of the great obelisk which 
commemorates the conflict? 

The room more especially assigned to me 
looked out, at a distance of not more than a 
stone's-throw, on the northern aspect of the 
church wliere Shakespeare lies buried. AVork- 
men were busy on the roof, of the transept. I 
could not conveniently climb up to have a talk 
with the roofers, but I have my doubts whether 
they were thinking all the time of the dust over 
which they were working. ITow small a matter 
/' literature is to the great seething, toiling, strug- 
i gling, love-making, bread-winning, child-rearing, 
\ death-awaiting men and women who fill this 
huge, palpitating world of ours ! It would be 
worth while to pass a week or a month among 
the plain, average people of Stratford. What 
is the relative importance in human well-being 
of the emendations of the text of Ilandet and 
the patching of the old trousers and the darning 
of the old stockings which task the needles of 



STRA T FORD-ON- A VON. 143 

the hard-working households that fight the hattle 
of life in these narrow streets and alleys ? I 
ask the question ; the reader may answer it. 

Our host, Mr. Flower, is more deeply inter- 
ested, perhaps, than any other individual in the 
" Shakespeare Memorial " buildings which have 
been erected on the banks of the Avon, a short 
distance above tlie Church of the Holy Trinity. 
Under Mr. Flower's guidance we got into one of 
his boats, and were rowed up the stream to the 
Memorial edifice. There is a theatre, in a round 
tower which has borrowed some traits from the 
octagon " Globe " theatre of Shakespeare's day ; 
a Shakespeare library and portrait gallery are 
forming ; and in due time these buildings, of 
stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, 
will constitute a Shakespearean centre which will 
attract to itself many mementoes now scattered 
about in various parts of the country. 

On the 4th of July we remembered our native 
land with all the affectionate pride of temporary 
exiles, and did not forget to drink at lunch to 
the prosperity and continued happiness of the 
United States of America. In the afternoon we 
took to the boat again, and were rowed up the 



144 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

river to the residence of Mr. Edgar Flower, 
where we found another characteristic English 
family, with its nine children, one of whom was 
the typical English boy, most pleasing and at- 
tractive in look, voice, and manner. 

I attempt no description of the church, the 
birthplace, or the other constantly visited and 
often described localities. The noble bridge, 
built in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh 
Clopton, and afterwards widened, excited my ad- 
miration. It was a much finer piece of work 
than the one built long afterwards. I have 
hardly seen anything which gave me a more 
striking proof of the thoroughness of the old 
English workmen. They built not for an age, 
but for all time, and the New Zealander will 
have to wait a long while before he will find in 
any one of the older bridges that broken arch 
from which he is to survey the ruins of London. 

It is very pleasant to pick up a new epithet to 
apply to the poet upon whose genius our lan- 
guage has nearly exhausted itself. It delights 
me to speak of him in the words which I have 
just found in a memoir not yet a century old, as 
" the Warwickshire bard," " the inestimable 
Shakespeare." 



STRA TFORD-ON-A VON. 145 

Ever since Miss Bacon made her insane at- 
tempt to unearth what is left of Shakespeare's 
bodily frame, tlie thought of doing reverently 
and openly what she would have done by stealth 
has been entertained by psychologists, artists, 
and others who would like to know what were 
his cranial developments, and to judge from the 
conformation of the skull and face which of the 
various portraits is probably the true one. 
There is little doubt that but for the curse in- 
voked upon the person who should disturb his 
bones, in the well-known lines on the slab which 
covers him, he would rest, like Napoleon, like 
Washington, in a fitting receptacle of marble or 
porphyry. In the transfer of his remains the 
curiosity of men of science and artists would 
have been gratified, if decay had spared the more 
durable portions of his material structure. It 
was probably not against such a transfer that 
the lines were written, — whoever was their 
author, — but in the fear that they would be 
carried to the charnel-house. 

*' In this charnel-house was contained a vast 
collection of human bones. How long they had 
been deposited there is not easily to be deter- 



146 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

mined ; but it is evident, from the immense 
quantity contained in the vault, it could have 
been used for no other purpose for many ages." 
"It is probable tliat from an early contemplation 
of tliis dreary ^pot Shakespeare imbibed that 
horror of a viofation of sepulture which is obser- 
vable in many parts of his writings." 

The body of Raphael was disinterred in 1833 
to settle a question of identity of the remains, 
and placed in a new coffin of lead, which was 
deposited in a marble sarcophagus presented by 
the Pope. The sarcophagus, with its contents, 
was replaced in the same spot from which the 
remains had been taken. But for the inscription 
such a transfer of the bones of Shakespeare 
would have been proposed, and possibly carried 
out. Kings and emperors have frequently been 
treated in this way after death, and the proposi- 
tion is no more an indignity than was that of 
the exhumation of the remains of Napoleon, or 
of Andre, or of the author of " Home, Sweet 
Home." But sentiment, a tender regard for the 
supposed wishes of the dead poet, and a natural 
dread of the consequences of violating a dying 
wish, coupled with the execration of its contem- 



STRATFORD-ON-A VON. 147 

ncr, aro too powerful for the arguments of sci- 
ence and the pleadings of art. Jf Shake.speare's 
body had been ombalnied, — which there is no 
reason that I know of to suppose, — the desire 
to compare his features with the bust and the 
portraits would have been mueli more imperative. 
When the body of Charles the First was exam- 
ined, under tlic direction of Sir Ib^nry ilalford, 
in the presence of the Kegi^nt, afterwards (ieorgc 
the Fourtli, tlie face would liave been recognized 
at once by all who were accjuainted witli Van- 
dyke's portrait of the monarch, if ilie litiiograph 
which comes attaelied to Sir Henry's memoir is 
an accurate representation of what they found. 
Even the bony framework of the face, as I have 
had occasion to know, has sometlnu^s a striking- 
likeness to what it was when clotlied in its nat- 
ural features. As between tlie first engraved 
portrait and the bust in the church, the form of 
the bones of the head and face would probably 
be decisive. But the world can afford to live 
without solving tliis dou})t, and leave his perish- 
ing vesture of decay to its repose. 

After seeing the Shakcs})eare slirlnes, we 
drove over to Shottery, and visited the Anne 



148 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Hathaway cottage. I am not sure whether I 
ever saw it before, but it was as familiar to me 
as if I had lived in it. The old lady who showed 
it was agreeably communicative, and in perfect 
keeping with the place. 

A delightful excursion of ten or a dozen miles 
carried our party, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. 

Flower, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, with A and 

myself, to Compton Wynyate, a most interest- 
ing old mansion, belonging to the Marquis of 
Northampton, who, with his daughter-in-law, 
Lady William Compton, welcomed us and 
showed us all the wonders of the place. It was 
a fine morning, but hot enough for one of our 
American July days. The drive was through 
English rural scenery ; that is to say, it was 
lovely. The old house is a great curiosity. It 
was built in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and 
has passed through many vicissitudes. The 
place, as well as the edifice, is a study for the 
antiquarian. Remains of the old moat which 
surrounded it are still distinguishable. The 
twisted and variously figured chimneys are of 
singular variety and exceptional forms. Comp- 
ton Wynyate is thought to get its name from the 



COMPTON WYNYATE. 149 

vineyards formerly under cultivation on the hill- 
sides, which show the signs of having been laid 
out in terraces. The great hall, with its gallery, 
and its hangings, and the long table made from 
the trunk of a single tree, carries one back into 
the past centuries. There are strange nooks 
and corners and passages in the old building, 
and one place, a queer little " cubby-hole," lias 
the appearance of having been a Roman Catho- 
lic chapel. I asked the master of the house, 
who pointed out the curiosities of the place most 
courteously, about the ghosts who of course were 
tenants in common with the living proprietors. 
I was surprised when he told me there were 
none. It was incredible, for here was every ac- 
commodation for a spiritual visitant. I should 
have expected at least one liaunted chamber, to 
say nothing of blood-stains that could never be 
got rid of ; but there were no legends of the su- 
pernatural or the terrible. 

Refreshments were served us, among which 
were some hot-house peaches, ethereally delicate 
as if they had grown in the Elysian Fields and 
been stolen from a banquet of angels. After 
this we went out on the lawn, where, at Lady 



150 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

William Compton's request, I recited one or two 
poems ; the only time I did such a thing in Eng- 
land. 

It seems as if Compton Wynyate must have 
been written about in some novel or romance, — 
perhaps in more than one of both. It is the 
place of all others to be the scene of a romantic 
story. It lies so hidden away among the hills 
that its vulgar name, according to old Camden, 
was "Compton in the Hole." I am not sure 
that it was the scene of any actual conflict, but 
it narrowly escaped demolition in the great civil 
war, and in 1646 it was garrisoned by the Par- 
liament army. 

On the afternoon of July 6th, our hosts had a 
large garden-party. If nothing is more trying 
than one of these out-of-door meetings on a cold, 
windy, damp day, nothing can be more delight- 
ful than such a social gathering if the place and 
the weather are just what we could wish them. 
The garden-party of this afternoon was as near 
perfection as such a meeting could well be. The 
day was bright and warm, but not uncomforta- 
bly hot, to me, at least. The company strolled 
about the grounds, or rested on the piazzas, 
or watched the birds in the aviary, or studied 



STRATFORD-ON-A VON. 151 

rudimentary humanity in the monkey, or, better 
still, in a charming baby, for the first time on 
exhibition since she made the acquaintance of 
sunshine. Every one could dispose of himself 
or herself as fancy might suggest. I broke 
away at one time, and wandered alone by the 
side of the Avon, under the shadow of the tall 
trees upon its bank. The whole scene was as 
poetical, as inspiring, as any that I remember. 
It would be easy to write verses about it, but 
unwritten poems are so much better ! 

One reminiscence of that afternoon claims 
precedence over all the rest. The reader must 
not forget that I have been a medical practi- 
tioner, and for thirty-five years a professor in a 
medical school. Among the guests whom I met 
in the grounds was a gentleman of the medical 
profession, whose name I had often heard, and 
whom I was very glad to see and talk with. 
This was Mr. Lawson Tait, F. R. C. S., M. D., 
of Birmingham. Mr., or more properly Dr., 
Tait has had the most extraordinary success in a 
class of cases long considered beyond the reach 
of surgery. If I refer to it as a scientific hari 
kari, not for the taking but for the saving of 



152 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

life, I shall come near enough to its description. 
This operation is said to have been first per- 
formed by an American surgeon in Danville, 
Kentucky, in the year 1809. So rash and dan- 
gerous did it seem to most of the profession that 
it was sometimes spoken of as if to attempt it 
were a crime. Gradually, however, by improved 
methods, and especially by the most assiduous 
care in nursing the patient after the operation, 
the mortality grew less and less, until it was 
recognized as a legitimate and indeed an invalu- 
able addition to the resources of surgery. Mr. 
Lawson Tait has had, so far as I have been able 
to learn, the most wonderful series of successful 
cases on record: namely, one hundred and 
thirty -nine consecutive operations without a sin- 
gle death. 

As I sat by the side of this great surgeon, a 
question suggested itself to my mind which I 
leave the reader to think over. Which would 
give the most satisfaction to a thoroughly hu- 
mane and unselfish being, of cultivated intelli- 
gence and lively sensibilities : to have written all 
the plays which Shakespeare has left as an in- 
heritance for mankind, or to have snatched from 



STRA TFORD'ON-A VON. 153 

the jaws of death more than a hundred fellow- 
creatures, — almost seven scores of suffering 
women, — and restored them to sound and com- 
fortable existence ? It would be curious to get 
the answers of a hundred men and a hundred 
women, of a hundred young people and a hun- 
dred old ones, of a hundred scholars and a hun- 
dred operatives. My own specialty is asking 
questions, not answering them, and I trust I 
shall not receive a peck or two of letters inquir- 
ing of me how I should choose if such a ques- 
tion were asked me. It may prove as fertile a 
source of dispute as " The Lady or the Tiger." 

It would have been a great thing to pass a 
single night close to the church where Shake- 
speare's dust lies buried. A single visit by 
daylight leaves a comparatively slight impres- 
sion. But when, after a night's sleep, one 
wakes up and sees the spire and the old walls 
fuU before him, that impression is very greatly 
deepened, and the whole scene becomes far 
more a reality. Now I was nearly a whole 
week at Stratford-on-Avon. The church, its 
exterior, its interior, the birthplace, the river, 
had time to make themselves permanent images 



154 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

in my mind. To effect this requires a certain 
amount of exposure, as much as in the case of 
a photographic negative. 

And so we bade good-by to Stratford-on- 
Avon and its hospitalities, with grateful remem- 
brances of our kind entertainers and all they 
did for our comfort and enjoyment. 

Where should we go next? Our travelling 
host proposed Great Malvern, a famous water- 
ing-place, where we should find peace, rest, and 
good accommodations. So there we went, and 
soon found ourselves installed at the " Foley 
Arms " hotel. The room I was shown to looked 
out upon an apothecary's shop, and from the 
window of that shop stared out upon me a plas- 
ter bust which I recognized as that of Samuel 
Hahnemann. I was glad to change to another 
apartment, but it may be a comfort to some of 
his American followers to know that traces of 
homoeopathy, — or what still continues to call 
itself so, — survive in the Old World, which 
we have understood was pretty well tired of it. 

We spent several days very pleasantly at 
Great Malvern. It lies at the foot of a range 



GREAT MALVERN. 155 

of hills, the loftiest of which is over a thousand 

feet in height. A and I thought we would 

go to the top of one of these, known as the 
Beacon. We hired a "four-wheeler," dragged 
by a much-enduring horse and in charge of a 
civil young man. We turned out of one of the 
streets not far from the hotel, and found our- 
selves facing an ascent which looked like what 
I should suppose would be a pretty steep tobog- 
gan slide. We both drew back. "Facilis 
ascensus," I said to myself, "sed revocare 
gradum." It is easy enough to get up if you 
are dragged up, but how will it be to come 
down such a declivity? When we reached it 
on our return, the semi-precipice had lost all its 
terrors. We had seen and travelled over so 
much worse places that this little bit of slanting 
road seemed as nothing. The road which wound 
up to the summit of the Beacon was narrow and 
uneven. It ran close to the edge of the steep 
hillside, — so close that there were times when 
every one of our forty digits curled up like a 
bird's claw. If we went over, it would not be a 
fall down a good honest precipice, — a swish 
through the air and a smash at the bottom, — 



156 orn hundred days in e trope. 

but a tumbling, and a rolling over and over, and 
a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until 
wo bounded into the level below, all ready for 
the coroner. At one sudden turn of the road the 
horse's body projected so far over its edge that 

A declared if the beast had been an inch 

longer ho would have toppled over. When we 
got close to the sunnnit we found the wind blow- 
ing almost a gale. A says in her diary that 

I (meaning her honored parent^ '' nearly blew 
oft' from the top of the mountain.'' It is true 
that the force of the wind was something fearful, 
and seeing that two young men near me were 
exposed to its fury, I offered an arm to each of 
them, which they were not too proud to accept ; 

A was equally attentive to another young 

person ; and having seen as much of the prospect 
as we cared to, we were glad to get back to our 
four-wheeler and our hotel, after a perilous jour- 
ney almost comparable to Mark Twain's ascent 
of the Kiftelberg. 

At Great JNIalvern we were delioiously idle. 
Wo walked about the place, rested quietly, 
drove into the neighboring country, and made a 
single excursion, — to Tewkesbury. There arc 
few places better worth seeing than this line old 



GIIEA T MAL VERN. - TE WKESB UR Y. 1 57 

town, full of liifltorical associations and monn- 
mcntal relics. The magnificent old abbey church 
is the central object of intcM-cst. The noble 
Norman tower, one hundred and thii'ty-two feet 
in height, wa.s once Hunuounted by a spire, 
which fell during divine service on Kaster Day 
of the year 1559. The arch of the west entrance 
is sixteen feet high and thirty-four feet wide. 
The fourteen columns of the nave arc each six 
feet and tlinjc inclies in diamct(M- and thirty feet 
in height. I did not take these measurements 
from the fabric itself, but froui ili<i guides-book, 
and I give them here instead of saying that the 
columns were huge, enormous, colossal, as they 
did most assuredly seem to me. The ohl houses 
of Tewkesbury compare well with the finest of 
those in Chester. I have a photograph before 
mo of one of them, in which each of the three 
upper floors overhangs the one beneath it, and 
the windows in the pointed gable above project 
over those of the fourth floor. 

I ought to have visited the site of Holme 
Castle, the name of which reminds me of my 
own origin. " The meaning of tlui Saxon word 
' Holme ' is a meadow surrounded with brooks, 



158 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE, 

and here not only did the castle bear the name, 
but the meadow is. described as the ' Holme, — 
where the castle was.' " The final s in the 
name as we spell it is a frequent addition to old 
English names, as Camden mentions, giving the 
name Holmes among the examples. As there 
is no castle at the Holme now, I need not pur- 
sue my inquiries any further. It was by acci- 
dent that I stumbled on this bit of archaeology, 
and as I have a good many namesakes, it may 
perhaps please some of them to be told about it. 
Few of us hold any castles, I think, in these days, 
except those chateaux en Esjyagne^ of which I 
doubt not, many of us are lords and masters. 

In another of our excursions we visited a ven- 
erable church, where our attention was called to 
a particular monument. It was erected to the 
memory of one of the best of husbands by his 
" wretched widow," who records upon the marble 
that there never was such a man on the face of 
the earth before, and never will be again, and 
that there never was anybody so miserable as 
she, — no, never, never, never! These are not 
the exact words, but this is pretty nearly what 
she declares. The story is that she married 
again within a year. 



GREAT MALVERN, 159 

From my window at the Foley Arms I can 
see the tower of the fine old abbey church of 
Malvern, which would be a centre of pilgrim- 
ages if it were in our country. But England is 
full of such monumental structures, into the 
history of which the local antiquarians burrow, 
and pass their peaceful lives in studying and 
writing about them with the same innocent en- 
thusiasm that White of Selborne manifested in 
studying nature as his village showed it to him. 

In our long drives we have seen everywhere 
the same picturesque old cottages, with the 
pretty gardens, and abundant flowers, and noble 
trees, more frequently elms than any other. 
One day — it was on the 10th of July — we 
found ourselves driving through what seemed to 
be a gentleman's estate, an ample domain, well 
wooded and well kept. On inquiring to whom 
this place belonged, I was told that the owner 
was Sir Edmund Lechmere. The name had a 
very familiar sound to my ears. Without rising 
from the table at which I am now writing, I 
have only to turn my head, and in full view, at 
the distance of a mile, just across the estuary of 
the Charles, shining in the morning sun, are the 



160 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

roofs and spires and chimneys of East Cam- 
bridge, always known in my younger days as 
Lechmere's Point. Judge Richard Lechmere 
was one of our old Cambridge Tories, whose 
property was confiscated at the time of the Rev- 
olution. An engraving of his handsome house, 
which stands next to the Vassall house, long 
known as Washington's headquarters, and since 
not less celebrated as the residence of Longfel- 
low, is before me, on one of the pages of the 
pleasing little volume, " The Cambridge of 
1776." I take it for granted that our Lech- 
meres were of the same stock as the owner of 
this property. If so, he probably knows all 
that I could tell him about his colonial relatives, 
who were very grand people, belonging to a 
little aristocratic circle of friends and relatives 
who were faithful to their king and their church. 
The Baroness Riedesel, wife of a Hessian officer 
who had been captured, was for a while resident 
in this house, and her name, scratched on a win- 
dow-pane, was long shown as a sight for eyes 
unused to titles other than governor, judge, 
colonel, and the like. I was tempted to present 
myself at Sir Edmund's door as one who knew 



BATH. IGl 

something about the Lechmeres in America, but 
I did not feel sure how cordially a descendant 
of tlie rebels who drove off Richard and Mary 
Lechmere would be received. 

From Great Malvern we went to Bath, an- 
other place where we could rest and be comfort- 
able. The Grand Pump-Koom Hotel was a 
stately building, and the bath-rooms were far 
beyond anything I had ever seen of that kind. 
The remains of the old Roman baths, which ap- 
pear to have been very extensive, are partially 
exposed. What surprises one all over the Old 
World is to see how deeply all the old civiliza- 
tions contrive to get buried. Everybody seems 
to have lived in the cellar. It is hard to believe 
that the cellar floor was once the sunlit surface 
of the smiling earth. 

I looked forward to seeing Bath with a curi- 
ous kind of interest. I once knew one of those 
dear old English ladies whom one finds all the 
world over, with their prim little ways, and their 
gilt prayer-books, and lavender-scented handker- 
chiefs, and family recollections. She gave me 
the idea that Bath, a city where the great peo- 
ple often congregate, was more especially the 



162 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

paradise of decayed gentlewomen. There, she 
told me, persons with very narrow incomes — 
not dcmi-fo7'tu7ies, but demi-quart-de-fortunes — 
could find everything arranged to accommodate 
their modest incomes. I saw the evidence of 
this everywhere. So great was the delight I had 
in looking in at the shop- windows of the long 
street which seemed to be one of the chief tho- 
roughfares that, after exploring it in its full ex- 
tent by myself, I went for A , and led her 

down one side its whole length and up the other. 
In these shops the precious old dears could buy 
everything they wanted in the most minute 
quantities. Such tempting heaps of lumps of 
white sugar, only twopence ! Such delectable 
cakes, two for a penny ! Such seductive scraps 
of meat, which would make a breakfast nourish- 
ing as well as relishing, possibly even what 
called itself a dinner, blushing to see themselves 
labelled threepence or fourpence ! We did not 
know whether to smile or to drop a tear, as 
we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt 
the coins from the exiguous purses of ancient 
maidens, forlorn widows, withered annuitants, 
stranded humanity in every stage of shipwi-ecked 



BATH. 163 

penury. I am reminded of Thackeray's "Jack 
Spiggot." " And what are your pursuits, Jack ? 
says I. ' Sold out when the governor died. 
Mother lives at Bath. Go down there once a 
year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling 
whist.' " Mrs. Gaskell's picture of " Cranford " 
is said to have been drawn from a village in 
Cheshire, but Bath must have a great deal in 
common with its " elegant economies." Do not 
make the mistake, however, of supposing that 
this splendid watering-place, sometimes spoken 
of as "the handsomest city in Britain," is only 
a city of refuge for people that have seen better 
days. Lord Macaulay speaks of it as "that 
beautiful city which charms even eyes familiar 
with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palla- 
dio." If it is not quite so conspicuous as a 
fashionable resort as it was in the days of Beau 
Nash or of Christopher Anstey, it has never lost 
its popularity. Chesterfield writes in 1764, 
" The number of people in this place is infinite," 
and at the present time the annual influx of vis- 
itors is said to vary from ten to fourteen thou- 
sand. Many of its public buildings are fine, 
and the abbey church, dating from 1499, is an 



164 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

object of much curiosity, especially on account 
of the sculptures on its western facade. These 
represent two ladders, with angels going up and 
down upon them, — suggested by a dream of 
the founder of the church, repeating that of 
Jacob. 

On the 14tli of July we left Bath for Salis- 
bury. While passing Westbury, one of our fel- 
low-passengers exclaimed, " Look out ! Look 
out!" "What is it?" "The horse! the 
horse ! " All our heads turned to the window, 
and all our eyes fastened on the figure of a 
white horse, upon a hillside some miles distant. 
This was not the white horse which Mr. 
Thomas Hughes has made famous, but one of 
uuich less archaic aspect and more questionable 
history. A little book which we bought tells us 
all we care to know about it. " It is formed by 
excoriating the turf over the steep slope of the 
northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain." It 
was " remodelled " in 1778, and " restored " in 
1873 at a cost of between sixty and seventy 
pounds. It is said that a smaller and ruder 
horse stood here from time immemorial, and was 
made to commemorate a victory of Alfred over 



/ 



SAUSBURY. 165 

the Danes. However that may be, the horse we 
now see on the hillside is a very modern-looking 
and well- shaped animal, and is of the following 
dimensions : length, 170 feet ; height from high- 
est part of back, 128 feet ; thickness of body, 
55 feet ; length of head, 50 feet ; eye, 6 by 8 
feet. It is a very pretty little object as we see 
it in the distance. 

Salisbury Cathedral was my first love among 
all the wonderful ecclesiastical buildings which I 
saw during my earlier journey. I looked for- 
ward to seeing it again with great anticipations 
of 2)leasure, which were more than realized. 

Our travelling host had taken a whole house 
in the Close, — a privileged enclosure, contain- 
ing the cathedral, the bishop's palace, houses of 
the clergy, and a limited number of private resi- 
dences, one of the very best of which was given 
over entirely into the hands of our party during 
our visit. The house was about as near the 
cathedral as Mr. Flower's house, where we 
stayed at Stratford-on-Avon, was to the Church 
of the Holy Trinity. It was very completely 
furnished, and in the room assigned to me as 
my library I found books in various languages, 



166 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

showing that the residence was that of a schol- 
arly person. 

If one had to name the apple of the eye of 
England, I think he would be likely to say that 
Salisbury Cathedral was as near as he could 
come to it, and that the white of the eye was 
Salisbury Close. The cathedral is surrounded 
by a high wall, the gates of which, — its eyelids, 
— are closed every night at a seasonable hour, 
at which the virtuous inhabitants are expected 
to be in their safe and sacred quarters. Houses 
within this hallowed precinct naturally bring a 
higher rent than those of the unsanctified and 
unprotected region outside of its walls. It is a 
realm of peace, glorified by the divine edifice, 
which lifts the least imaginative soul upward 
to the heavens its spire seems trying to reach ; 
beautified by rows of noble elms which stretch 
high aloft, as if in emulation of the spire; be- 
atified by holy memories of the good and great 
men who have worn their lives out in the service 
of the church of which it is one of the noblest 
temples. 

For a whole week we lived under the shadow 
of the spire of the great cathedral. Our house 



SALISBURY. 167 

was opposite the north transept, only separated 
by the road in front of it from the cathedral 
grounds. Here, as at Stratford, I learned what 
it was to awake morning after morning and find 
that I was not dreaming, but there in the truth- 
telling daylight the object of my admiration, de- 
votion, almost worship, stood before me. I need 
not here say anything more of the cathedral, ex- 
cept that its perfect exterior is hardly equalled 
in beauty by its interior, which looks somewhat 
bare and cold. It was my impression that there 
is more to study than to admire in the interior, 
but I saw the cathedral so much often er on the 
outside than on the inside that I may not have 
done justice to the latter aspect of the noble 
building. 

Nothing could be more restful than our week 
at Salisbury. There was enough in the old 
town besides the cathedral to interest us, — old 
buildings, a museum full of curious objects, and 
the old town itself. When I was there the first 
time, I remember that we picked up a guide- 
book in which we found a verse that has re- 
mained in my memory ever since. It is an 
epitaph on a native of Salisbury who died in 
Venice. 



168 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

" Born in the English Venice, thou didst dye 
Dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury." 

This would be hard to understand except for the 
explanation which the local antiquarians give us 
of its significance. The Wiltshire Avon flows 
by or through the town, which is drained by 
brooks that run through its streets. These, 
which used to be open, are now covered over, 
and thus the epitaph becomes somewhat puz- 
zling, as there is nothing to remind one of 
Venice in walking about the town. 

While at Salisbury we made several excur- 
sions : to Old Sarum ; to Bemerton, where we 
saw the residence of holy George Herbert, and 
visited the little atom of a church in which he 
ministered ; to Clarendon Park ; to Wilton, the 
seat of the Earl of Pembroke, a most interesting 
place for itself and its recollections ; and lastly 
to Stonehenge. My second visit to the great 
stones after so long an interval was a strange 
experience. But what is half a century to a 
place like Stonehenge ? Nothing dwarfs an in- 
dividual life like one of these massive, almost 
unchanging monuments of an antiquity which re- 
fuses to be measured. The " Shepherd of Salis- 



STONEHENGE. 169 

bury Plain '* was represented by an old man, 
wlio told all he knew and a good deal more 
about the great stones, and sheared a living, not 
from sheep, but from visitors, in the shape of 
shillings and sixpences. I saw nothing that 
wore unwoven wool on its back in the neighbor- 
hood of the monuments, but sheep are shown 
straggling among them in the photographs. 

The broken circle of stones, some in their 
original position, some bending over like old 
men, some lying prostrate, suggested the 
thoughts which took form in the following 
verses. They were read at the annual meeting, 
in January, of the class which graduated at 
Harvard College in the year 1829. Eight of 
the fifty-nine men who graduated sat round the 
small table. There were several other class- 
mates living, but infirmity, distance, and other 
peremptory reasons kept them from being with 
us. I have read forty poems at our successive 
annual meetings. I will introduce this last one 
by quoting a stanza from the poem I read in 
1851 : — 

As one by one is falling 
Beneath the leaves or snows, 



170 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Each memory still reoiUling 
The broken ring" sliall close, 

Till the iiight winds softly pass 
O'er the green and gTowing grass, 

Where it waves on tlie graves 
Of the '* Boys of 'Twenty-nine." 



THE BROKEN CIRCLE. 

I stood on Sarum s treeless plain, 

The waste that careless Nature owns ; 

Lone tenants of her bleak domain, 

Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. 

Upheaved in many a billowy mound 

The sea-like, naked turf arose, 
Where wandering flocks Avent nibbling round 

The mingled graves of friends and foes. 

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, 
This windy desert roamed in turn ; 

Unmoved these mighty blocks remain 
Whose story none that lives may learn. 

Erect, half buried, slant or prone. 

These awful listeners, blind and dumb, 

Heai" the strange tongues of tribes unknown. 
As wave on wave they go and come. 

• 

Who are you, giants, whence and why ? " 
I stand and ask in blank amaze : 



STONEUENGE. 171 

My soul accepts their mute reply : 
"A mystery, as are you that gaze. 

*' A silent Orpheus wrought the charm 

From riven rocks their spoils to bring; 
A nameless Titan lent his arm 
To range us in our magic ring. 

*' But Time with still and stealthy stride, 
That climbs and treads and levels all, 
That bids the loosening keystone slide. 
And topples down the crumbling wall, — 

"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, 

Leans on these wrecks that press the sod ; 
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, 
And strew the turf their priests have trod. 

" No more our altar's wreath of smoke 

Floats up vnth morning's fra^ant dew ; 
The fires are dead, the ring is broke. 
Where stood the many stand the few.'* 

— My thoughts had wandered far away, 
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing. 

To where in deepening twilight lay 

The wrecks of friendship's broken ring. 

Ah me ! of all our goodly train 

How few will find our banquet hall ! 

Yet why with coward lips complain 

That this must lean and that must fall ? 



172 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Cold is the Druid's altar-stono, 

Its vaiii.slnMl ilaino no luoro roturns ; 

But ours no cliilling damp has known, — 
Unchanged, unclianging-, still it burns. 

So let our broken circle stand 

A wreck, a remnant, yot t-lie same, 

While one last, loving-, faithful hand 
Still lives to feed its altar-flame 1 

My lieart has gone back over the waters to 
my old friends and my own home. Wlien this 
vision has faded, I will retnrn to the silence of 
the lovely Close and the shadow of the great 
Cathedral. 



V. 

The remembrance of home, with its early 
and precious and long-enduring friendships, has 
intruded itself among my recollections of what 
I saw and heard, of what I felt and thought, in 
the distant land I was visiting. I must return 
to the scene where I found myself when the 
suggestion of the broken circle ran away with 
my imagination. 

The literature of Stonehenge is extensive, and 
illustrates the weakness of archaeologists almost 
as well as the "Praitorium" of Scott's "Anti- 
quary." " In 1823," says a local handbook, 
" n. Browne, of Amesbury, published ' An Il- 
lustration of Stonehenge and Abury,' in which 
he endeavored to show that both of these mon- 
uments were antediluvian, and that the lat- 
ter was formed under the direction of Adam. 
He ascribes the present dilapidated condition 
of Stonehenge to the operation of the general 
deluge ; for, he adds, ' to suppose it to be the 



174 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

work of any people since the flood is entirely 
monstrous.' " 

We know well enough how great stones, — 
pillars and obelisks, — are brought into place by 
means of our modern appliances. But if the 
great blocks were raised by a mob of naked 
Picts, or any tribe that knew none of the me- 
chanical powers but the lever, how did they set 
them up and lay the cross-stones, the im- 
posts, upon the uprights ? It is pleasant, once 
in a while, to think how we should have man- 
aged any such matters as this if left to our nat- 
ural resources. We are all interested in the 
make-shifts of Robinson Crusoe. Now the 
rudest tribes make cords of some kind, and 
the earliest, or almost the earliest, of artificial 
structures is an earth-mound. If a hundred, or 
hundreds, of men could drag the huge stones 
many leagues, as they must have done to bring 
them to their destined place, they could have 
drawn each of them up a long slanting mound 
ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the 
foot of the stone at its base. If the stone were 
now tipped over, it would slide into its place, 
and could be easily raised from its slanting posi- 



STONEHENGE. 176 

tion to the perpendicular. Then filling in the 
space between the mound and two contiguous 
stones, the impost could be dragged up to its 
position. I found a pleasure in working at this 
simple mechanical problem, as a change from 
the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the 
mysterious monuments. 

One incident of our excursion to Stonehenge 
had a significance for me which renders it mem- 
orable in my personal experience. As we drove 
over the barren plain, one of the party suddenly 
exclaimed, " Look ! Look ! See the lark rising ! " 
I looked up with the rest. There was the bright 
blue sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes 
could distinguish. Again, one called out, 
" Hark ! Hark ! Hear him singing ! " I listened, 
but not a sound reached my ear. Was it strange 
that I felfc a momentary pang? Those that 
look out at the windows are darkened^ and all 
the daughters of music are brought low. Was 
I never to see or hear the soaring songster at 
Heaven's gate, — unless, — unless, — if our mild 
humanized theology promises truly, I may per- 
haps hereafter listen to him singing far down 
beneath me ? For in whatever world I may find 



176 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

myself, I hope I shall always love our poor little 
spheroid, so long my home, which some kind 
angel may point out to me as a gilded globule 
swimming in the sunlight far away. After 
walking the streets of pure gold in the New 
Jerusalem, might not one like a short vacation, 
to visit the well-remembered green fields and 
flowery meadows ? I had a very sweet emotion 
of self-pity, which took the sting out of my 
painful discovery that the orchestra of my pleas- 
ing life-entertainment was unstringing its instru- 
ments, and the lights were being extinguished, 
— that the show was almost over. All this I 
kept to myself, of course, except so far as I 
whispered it to the unseen presence which we all 
feel is in sympathy with us, and which, as it 
seemed to my fancy, was looking into my eyes, 
and through them into my soul, with the tender, 
tearfid smile of a mother who for the first time 
gently presses back the longing lips of her as 
yet unweaned infant. 

On our way back from Stonehenge we stopped 
and took a cup of tea with a friend of our host, 
]\Ir. Nightingale. His house, a bachelor estab- 
lishment, was very attractive to us by the beauty 



SALISBURY. 177 

within and around it. His collection of " china," 
as Popo and old-fashioned people call all sorts 
of earthenware, excited the enthusiasm of our 
host, whose admiration of some rare pieces in 
the collection was so great that it would have 
run into envy in a less generous nature. 

It is very delightful to iind one's self in one 
of these English country residences. The house 
is commonly old, and has a history. It Is often- 
times itself a record, like that old farmhouse 
my friend John Bellows wrote to me about, 
which chronicled half a dozen reigns by various 
architectural marks as exactly as if it had been 
an official register. " The stately homes of 
England," as we see them at Wilton and Long- 
ford Castle, are not more admirable in their 
splendors than " the blessed homes of England " 
in their modest beauty. Everywhere one may 
see here old parsonages by the side of ivy- 
mantled churches, and tlie comfortable mansions 
where generations of country squires have lived 
in pejic;e, while their sons have gone foith to 
fight England's battles, and carry her flags of 
war and commerce all over the world. We in 
America can hardly be said to have such a pos- 



178 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

session as a family home. We encamp, — not 
tinder canvas, but in fabrics of wood or more 
lasting materials, which are pulled down after 
a brief occupancy by the builders, and possibly 
their children, or are modernized so that the 
former dwellers in them would never recognize 
their old habitations. 

In my various excursions from Salisbury I was 
followed everywhere by the all-pervading pres- 
ence of the towering spire. Just what it was in 
that earlier visit, when my eyes were undimmed 
and my sensibilities unworn, just such I found 
it now. As one drives away from the town, the 
roofs of the houses drop out of the landscape, 
the lesser spires disappear one by one, until the 
great shaft is left standing alone, — solitary as 
the broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert, 
as the mast of some mighty ship above the 
waves which have rolled over the foundering 
vessel. Most persons will, I think, own to a 
feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few can 
look down from a great height without creepings 
and crispations, if they do not get as far as 
vertigos and that aerial calenture which prompts 
them to jump from the pinnacle on which they 



SALISBURY. 179 

are standing. It does not take much imagina- 
tion to make one experience something of the 
same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple 
or chimney. To one whose eyes are used to 
Park Street and the Old South steeples as stan- 
dards of height, a spire which climbs four hun- 
dred feet towards the sky is a new sensation. 
Whether I am more " afraid of that which is 
high " than I was at my first visit, as I should 
be on the authority of Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, 
but it was quite enough for me to let my eyes 
climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to 
stand upon that " bad eminence," as I am sure 
that I should have found it. 

I soon noticed a slight deflection from the 
perpendicular at the upper part of the spire. 
This has long been observed. I could not say 
that I saw the spire quivering in the wind, as I 
felt that of Strasburg doing when I ascended it, 
— swaying like a blade of grass when a breath of 
air passes over it. But it has been, for at least 
two hundred years, nearly two feet out of the 
perpendicular. No increase in the deviation was 
found to exist when it was examined early in the 
present century. It is a wonder that this slight- 



180 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

looking structure can have survived the blasts, 
and thunderbolts, and earthquakes, and the 
weakening effects of time on its stones and tim- 
bers for five hundred years. Since the spire of 
Chichester Cathedral fell in 18G1, sheathing 
itself in its tower like a sword dropping into its 
scabbard, one can hardly help looking with 
apprehension at all these lofty fabrics. I have 
before referred to the fall of the spire of Tewkes- 
bury Abbey church, three centuries earlier. 
There has been a good deal of fear for the Salis- 
bury spire, and great precautions have been 
taken to keep it firm, so that we may hope it 
will stand for another five hundred years. It 
ought to be a " joy forever," for it is a thing of 
beauty, if ever there were one. 

I never felt inclined to play the part of the 
young enthusiast in " Excelsior," as I looked up 
at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. 
But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle 
has to get up to it in some way, and that way is 
by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of 
the top, where there is a small door, through 
which he emerges, to crawl up the remaining 
distance on the outside. " The situation and 



SAUSIifJItY. 181 

appearance," says one of the guide-books, "must 
be terrific, yet many persons have voluntarily 
and daringly clambered to tlie toj), even in a 
state of intoxication." Such, I feel sure, was 
not the state of my most valued and exemf)laTy 
clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady 
nerves, found himself standing in saf(;ty at the 
top of th(; s])ire, with his liand u[>on llie van(;, 
which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down 
upon in its lofty position, except a l^ird, a bat, 
a sky-rocket, or a balloon. 

In saying that the exterior of Salisbury V/dr 
thedral is more interesting than its interior, I 
was perhaps unfair to the latter, which only 
yields to the surpassing claims of the wonderful 
structure as seen from the outside. One may 
get a little tired of marble Crusaders, with their 
crossed legs and Vjroken noses, especially if, as 
one sometimes finds them, they are covered with 
the pencilled autographs of cockney scribblers. 
But there are monuments in this cathedral 
which excite curiosity, and others which awaken 
the most striking associations. There is the 
" Boy Bishop," his marble effigy protected from 
vandalism by an iron cage. There is the skel- 



182 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

eton figure representing Fox (who should have 
been called Goose), the poor creature who 
- starved lilniself to death in trying to imitate the 
fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since this 
performance has been taken out of the list of 
miracles, it is not so likely to be repeated by 
fanatics. I confess to a strong suspicion that 
this is one of the ambulatory or movable stories, 
like the " hangman's stone " legend, which I 
have found in so many different parts of Eng- 
land. Skulls and crossbones, sometimes skele- 
tons or skeleton-like figures, are not uncommon 
among the sepulchral embellishments of an ear- 
lier period. Where one of these figures is 
found, the forty-day-fast story is likely to grow 
out of it, as the mistletoe springs from the oak 
or apple tree. 

With far different emotions we look upon the 
spot where lie buried many of the Herbert fam- 
ily, among the rest, 

"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," 

for whom Ben Jonson wrote the celebrated ep- 
itaph. I am almost afraid to say it, but I never 
could admire the line, 

"Lies the subject of all verse," 



SALISBURY. 18:] 

nor the idea of Time dropping his hour-glass 
and scythe to throw a dart at the fleshless figure 
of Death. This last image seems to me a})out 
the (Kjiiivaleiit in mortuary poetry of lifjuhiliac's 
monument to Mrs. Nightingale in mortuary 
seulpture, — poor conceits both of them, without 
the suggestion of a tear in the verses or in tlie 
marble ; but the rhetorical exaggeration does not 
prevent us from fe(;ling that we arc standing by 
the resting-place of one who was 

** learn 'd and fair anrl ^ood " 

enough to stir the soul of stalwart Ben Jonson, 
and the names of Sidney and Herbert make us 
forg(;t the strange hyperboles. 

History meets us ev(;ry where, as we stray 
among these ancient monuments. Under that 
effigy lie the great bones of Sir John Cheyne, a 
mighty man of war, said to have Ixicn " over- 
thrown" by Kiehard the Third at the battle of 
Bos worth Field. What was left of him was un- 
earthed in 1789 in the demolition of the l>eau- 
champ chapel, and his thigh-bone was found to 
be four inches longer than that of a man of 
common stature. 

The reader may remember how my recollec- 



184 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

tions started from tlieir hiding-place when I 
came, in one of our excursions, upon the name 
of Lechmere, as belonging to the owner of a 
fine estate by or through which we were driving. 
I had a similar twinge of reminiscence at meet- 
ing with the name of Gorges, which is perpetu- 
ated by a stately monument at the end of the 
north aisle of the cathedral. Sir Thomas Gor- 
ges, Knight of Longford Castle, may or may 
not have been of the same family as the well- 
remembered grandiose personage of the New 
England Pilgrim period. The title this gentle- 
man bore had a far more magnificent sound than 
those of his contemporaries. Governor Carver 
and Elder Brewster. No title ever borne among 
us has filled the mouth quite so full as that of 
" Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Lord Palatine of the 
Province of Maine," a province with " Gorge- 
ana" (late the plantation of Agamenticus) as 
its capital. Everywhere in England a New 
Englander is constantly meeting with names of 
families and places which remind him that he 
comes of a graft from an old tree on a new 
stock. I could not keep down the associations 
called up by the name of Gorges. There is a 



SALISBURY. 185 

certain pleasure in now and then sprinkling our 
prosaic colonial history with the holy water of a 
high-sounding title ; not that a " Sir " before a 
man's name makes him any better, — for are 
we not all equal, and more than equal, to each 
other? — but it sounds pleasantly. Sir Harry 
Vane and Sir Harry Frankland look prettily on 
the printed page, as the illuminated capital at 
the head of a chapter in an old folio pleases 
the eye of the reader. Sir Thomas Gorges was 
the builder of Longford Castle, now the seat of 
the Earl of Radnor, whose family name is Bou- 
verie. Whether our Sir Ferdinando was of the 
Longford Castle stock or not I must leave to 
my associates of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society to determine. 

We lived very quietly at our temporary home 
in Salisbury Close. A pleasant dinner with the 
Dean, a stroll through the grounds of the epis- 
copal palace, with that perpetual feast of the 
eyes which the cathedral offered us, made our 
residence delightful at the time, and keeps it so 
in remembrance. Besides the cathedral there 
were the very lovely cloisters, the noble chapter- 
house with its central pillar, — this structure 



186 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Las been restored and rejuvenated since my 
earlier visit, — and there were the peaceful 
dwellings, where I insist on believing that only 
virtue and happiness are ever tenants. Even 
outside the sacred enclosure there is a great deal 
to enjoy, in the ancient town of Salisbury. One 
may rest under tlie Poultry Cross, where twenty 
or thirty generations have rested before him. 
One may purchase his china at the well-fur- 
nished establishment of the tenant of a spacious 
apartment of ancient date, — *' the Halle of 
John Halle," a fine private edifice built in the 
year 1470, restored and beautified in 1834: ; the 
emblazonment of the royal arms having been 
executed by the celebrated architectural artist 
Pugin. The old houses are numerous, and some 
of them eminently picturesque. 

Salisbury was formerly very unhealthy, on 
account of the low, swampy nature of its 
grounds. The Sanitary Reform, dating from 
about thirty years ago, had a great effect on the 
condition of the place. Before the drainage the 
annual mortality was twenty-seven in the thou- 
sand ; since the drainage twenty in the thousand, 
which is below that of Boston. In the Close, 



SALISBURY - OUj SARUM. 187 

wlilcli is a little Garden of Eden, with no Herpent 
in it that J could hear of, the deaths were only 
fourteen in a thouHand. Happy little enclosure, 
where thieves cannot break through and steal, 
where Death himself hesitates to enter, and 
makes a visit only now and then at long inter- 
vals, lest the fortunate inhabitants should think 
they had already reached the Celestial City ! 

It must have been a pretty bitter quarrel that 
drove the tenants of the airy height of Old 
Sarum to remove to the marshy level of tlie 
present site of the cathedral and the town. I 
wish v/e could have given more time to the 
ancient fortress and cathedral town. This is 
one of the most interesting historic localities of 
Great Britain. We looked from different points 
of view at the mounds and trenches which 
marked it as a strongly fortified position. For 
many centuries it played an important part in 
the history of England. At length, however, 
the jealousies of the laity and the clergy, a 
squabble like that of "town and gown," but 
with graver underlying causes, broke up the 
harmony and practically ended the existence of 
the place except as a monument of the past. It 



188 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

seems a pity that the headquarters of the Prince 
of Peace coiihl not have managed to maintain 
tranquillity within its own borders. 15ut so it 
was ; and the consequence followed tliat Old 
Sarum, with all its grand recollections, is but a 
collection of mounds and hollows, — as nuich a 
tomb of its past as Birs Nimroud of that great 
city, Nineveh. Old Sarum is now best remem- 
bered by its long-surviving privilege, as a bo- 
rough, of sending two members to Parliament. 
The farcical ceremony of electing two representa- 
tives who had no real constituency behind them 
was put an end to by the lieform A(}t of 1832. 

Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, 
within an easy drive's distance from Salisbury, 
was the first nobleman's residence I saw in my 
early visit. Not a great deal of what I then 
saw had survived in my memory. I recall the 
general effect of the stately mansion and its 
grounds. A picture or two of Vandyke's had 
not quite faded out of my recollection. I could 
not forget the armor of Anne de Montmorenci, 
— not another Maid of Orleans, but Constable 
of France, — said to have been taken in battle 
by an ancestor of the Herberts. It was one of 



SALISBURY.-^ WILTON HOUSE. 189 

the first things that made me feel I was in the 
Old World. Milos Standish's sword was as 
fjir back as Now England collections of armor 
carried us at that day. The remarkable gal- 
l(;ry of ancient scnl})tures impressed me at the 
time, ])ut no one biist or statue survived as 
a distinct image. Even the beautiful Palladian 
bridge had not pictured itself on my mental tal)- 
let as it sliould have done, and I could not have 
taken my oath that I had seen it. But the 
pretty English maidens whom we m(;t on t}i(;day 
of our visit to Wilton, — daughters or grand- 
daughters of a famous inventor and (engineer, — 
still lingered as vague and pleasing visions, so 
lovely had they seemed among the daisies and 
primroses. The primroses and daisies wen; as 
fresh in the spring of 188G as they wen; in the 
spring of 1838, but I hardly dared to ask after 
the blooming maidens of that early period. 

One memory predominates over all others, in 
walking through the halls, or still more in wan- 
dering through the grounds, of Wilton 1 louse. 
Here Sir Philip Sidney wrote his "Arcadia," and 
the ever youthful pnjsence of the man himself 
rather than the recollection of his writings takes 



190 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

possession of us. There are three young men in 
history whose names always present themselves 
to me in a special companionship : Pico della 
Miranclola, " the Phoenix of the Age " for his 
contemporaries ; " the Admirable Crichton," ac- 
cepting as true the accounts which have come 
down to us of his wonderful accomplishments ; 
and Sidney, the Bayard of England, " that glo- 
rious star, that lively pattern of virtue and the 
lovely joy of all the learned sort, . . . born into 
the world to show unto our age a sample of an- 
cient virtue." The English paragon of excel- 
lence was but thirty-two years old when he was 
slain at Zutphen, the Italian Phoenix but thirty- 
one when he was carried off by a fever, and the 
Scotch prodigy of gifts and attainments was only 
twenty-two when he was assassinated by his 
worthless pupil. Sir Philip Sidney is better re- 
membered by the draught of water he gave the 
dying soldier than by all the waters he ever drew 
from the fountain of the Muses, considerable as 
are the merits of his prose and verse. But here, 
where he came to cool his fiery spirit after the 
bitter insult he had received from tJie Earl of 
Leicester ; here, where he mused and wrote, and 



SALISBUR Y, — BEMERTON. 191 

shaped his lofty plans for a glorious future, he 
lives once more in our imagination, as if his 
spirit haunted the English Arcadia he loved so 
dearly. 

Tl]c name of Herbert, which we have met 
with in the cathedral, and which belongs to the 
Earls of Pembroke, presents itself to us once 
more in a very different and very beautiful 
aspect. Between Salisbury and Wilton, three 
miles and a half distant, is the little village of 
Bemerton, where " holy George Herbert " lived 
and died, and where he lies buried. Many 
Americans who know little else of him recall 
the lines borrowed from him by Irving in the 
'' Sketch-Book " and by Emerson in " Nature." 
The " Sketch-Book " gives the lines thus : — 

** Sweet day, so pure, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky." 

In other versions the fourth word is cool instead 
of pure^ and cool is, I believe, the correct read- 
ing. The day when we visited Bemerton was, 

according to A 's diary, " perfect." I was 

struck with the calm beauty of the scene around 
us, the fresh greenness of all growing things, 
and the stillness of the river which mirrored the 



192 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

heavens above it. It must have been this re- 
flection which the poet was thinking of when he 
spoke of the bridal of the earth and sky. The 
river is the Wiltshire Avon ; not Shakespeare's 
Avon, but the southern stream of the same 
name, which empties into the British Channel. 

So much of George Herbert's intellectual and 
moral character repeat themselves in Emerson 
that if I believed in metempsychosis I should 
think that the English saint had reappeared in 
the American philosopher. Their features have 
a certain resemblance, but the type, though an 
exceptional and fine one, is not so very rare. I 
found a portrait in the National Gallery which 
was a good specimen of it ; the bust of a near 
friend of his, more intimate with him than al- 
most any other person, is often taken for that of 
Emerson. I see something of it in the portrait 
of Sir Philip Sidney, and I doubt not that traces 
of a similar mental resemblance ran through 
the whole group, with individual characteristics 
which were in some respects quite different. I 
will take a single verse of Herbert's from Em- 
erson's "Nature," — one of the five which he 
quotes ; — 



GEORGE HERBERT. 193 

*' Nothing hath got so far 
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey ; 

His eyes dismount the highest star : 

He is in little all the sphere. 
Herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they 

Find their acquaintance there." 

Emerson himself fully recognizes his obligations 
to " the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth 
century," as he calls George Herbert. There 
are many passages in his writings which sound 
as if they were paraphrases from the elder poet. 
From him it is that Emerson gets a word he 
is fond of, and of which his imitators are too 
fond : — 

* ' Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 
Makes that and the action ./inc." 

The little chapel in which Herbert officiated is 
perhaps half as long again as the room in which 
I am writing, but it is four or five feet narrower, 
— and I do not live in a palace. Here this 
humble servant of God preached and prayed, 
and here by his faithful and loving service he so 
endeared himself to all around him that he has 
been canonized by an epithet no other saint of 
the English Church has had bestowed upon 
him. His life as pictured by Izaak Walton is, 
to borrow one of his own lines, 



194 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

" A box where sweets compacted lie ; " 

and I felt, as I left his little chapel and the par- 
sonage which he rebuilt as a free-will offering, 
as a pilgrim might feel who had just left the 
holy places at Jerusalem. 

Among the places which I saw in my first 
visit was Longford Castle, the seat of the Earl 
of Radnor. I remembered the curious triangu- 
lar building, constructed with reference to the 
doctrine of the Trinity, as churches are built in 
the form of the cross. I remembered how the 
omnipresent spire of the great cathedral, three 
miles away, looked down upon the grounds 
about the building as if it had been their next- 
door neighbor. I had not forgotten the two cel- 
ebrated Claudes, Morning and Evening. My 
eyes were drawn to the first of these two pictures 
when I was here before ; now they turned nat- 
urally to the landscape with the setting sun. I 
have read my St. Ruskin with due reverence, 
but I have never given up my allegiance to 
Claude Lorraine. But of all the fine paintings 
at Longford Castle, no one so much impressed 
me at my recent visit as the portrait of Erasmus 
by Hans Holbein. This is one of those pictures 



SALISBURY. — LONGFORD CASTLE. 195 

which help to make the Old World worth a voy- 
age across the Atlantic. Portraits of Erasmus 
are not uncommon ; every scholar would know 
him if he met him in the other world with the 
look he wore on earth. All the etchings and 
their copies give a characteristic presentation of 
the spiritual precursor of Luther, who pricked 
the false image with his rapier which the sturdy 
monk slashed with his broadsword. What a 
face it is which Hans Holbein has handed down 
to us in this wonderful portrait at Longford 
Castle ! How dry it is with scholastic labor, 
how keen with shrewd scepticism, how worldly- 
wise, how conscious of its owner's wide-awake 
sagacity ! Erasmus and Rabelais, — Nature 
used up all her arrows for their quivers, and 
had to wait a hundred years and more before 
she could find shafts enough for the outfit of 
Voltaire, leaner and keener than Erasmus, and 
almost as free in his language as the audacious 
creator of Gargantua and Pantagruel. 

I have not generally given descriptions of the 
curious objects which I saw in the great houses 
and museums which I visited. There is, how- 
ever, a work of art at Longford Castle so remark- 



196 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

able that I must speak of it. I was so much 
struck by the enormous amount of skilful inge- 
nuity and exquisite workmanship bestowed upon 
it that I looked up its history, which I found in 
the " Beauties of England and Wales." This 
is what is there said of the wonderful steel chair : 
" It was made by Thomas Rukers at the city of 
Augsburgh, in the year 1575, and consists of 
more than 130 compartments, all occupied by 
groups of figures representing a succession of 
events in the annals of the Roman Empire, from 
the landing of JEneas to the reign of Rodolphus 
the Second." It looks as if a life had gone into 
the making of it, as a pair or two of eyes go to 
the working of the bridal veil of an empress. 

Fifty years ago and more, when I was at 
Longford Castle with my two companions, who 
are no more with us, we found there a pleasant, 
motherly old housekeeper, or attendant of some 
kind, who gave us a draught of home-made ale 
and left a cheerful remembrance with us, as, I 
need hardly say, we did with her, in a material- 
ized expression of our good-will. It always 
rubbed very hard on my feelings to offer money 
to any persons who had served me well, as if they 



SALISBURY. 197 

were doing it for their own pleasure. It may 
have been the granddaughter of the kindly old 
matron of the year 1833 who showed us round, 
and possibly, if I had sunk a shaft of inquiry, 
I might have struck a well of sentiment. But 

" Take, boatman, thrice thy fee," 

carried into practical life, is certain in its finan- 
cial result to the subject of the emotional im- 
pulse, but is less sure to call forth a tender 
feeling in the recipient. One will hardly find it 
worth while to go through the world weeping 
over his old recollections, and paying gold in- 
stead of silver and silver instead of copper to 
astonished boatmen and bewildered chamber- 
maids. 

On Sunday, the 18th of July, we attended 
morning service at the cathedral. The congre- 
gation was not proportioned to the size of the 
great edifice. These vast places of worship 
were built for ages when faith was the rule and 
questioning the exception. I will not say that 
faith has grown cold, but it has cooled from 
white heat to cherry red or a still less flaming 
color. As to church attendance, I have heard 
the saying attributed to a great statesman, that 



198 OUR nUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

" once a day is Orthodox, but twice a day is 
Puritan." No doubt many of the same class of 
pcoi)le that used to fill the churches stay at home 
and read about evolution or telepathy, or what- 
ever new gospel they may have got hold of. Still 
the English seem to me a religious people ; they 
have leisure enough to say grace and give thanks 
before and after meals, and their institutions 
tend to keep alive the feelings of reverence which 
cannot be said to be distinctive of our own 
people. 

In coming out of the cathedral, on the Sunday 
I just mentioned, a gentleman addressed me as 
a fellow-countr^-man. There is somethhig, — I 
will not stop now to try and define it, — but 
there is something by which we recognize an 
American among the English before he speaks 
and betrays his origin. Our new friend proved 
to be the president of one of our American 
colleges ; an intelligent and well-instructed gen- 
tleman, of course. By the invitation of our host 
he came in to visit us in the evening, and made 
himself very welcome by his agreeable conver- 
sation. 

I took great delight in wandering about the 



SALISBURY. 199 

old town of Salisbury. There are no such sur- 
prises in our oldest places as one finds in Ches- 
ter, or Tewkesbury, or Stratford, or Salisbury, 
and I have no doubt in scores or hundreds of 
similar places which I have never visited. The 
best substitute for such rambles as one can take 
through these mouldy boroughs (or burrows) is 
to be found in such towns as Salem, Newbury- 
port, Portsmouth. Without imagination, Shake- 
speare's birthplace is but a queer old house, and 
Anne Ilathaway's home a tumble-down cottage. 
With it, one can see the witches of Salem Vil- 
lage sailing out of those little square windows, 
which look as if they were made on purpose for 
them, or stroll down to Derby's wharf and gaze 
at " Cleopatra's Barge," precursor of the yachts 
of the Astors and Goulds and Vanderbilts, as 
she comes swimming into the harbor in all her 
gilded glory. But it must make a difference 
what the imagination has to work upon, and I 
do not at all wonder that Mr. Kuskin would not 
wish to live in a land where there are no old 
ruins of castles and monasteries. Man will not 
live on bread only ; he wants a great deal more, 
if he can get it, — frosted cake as well as corn- 



200 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

bread ; and the New World keeps the iinagi- 
iiatioii on plain and scanty diet, compared to 
the rich traditional and historic food which fur- 
nishes the banquets of the Old World. 

What memories that week in Salisbury and 
tlie excursions from it have left in my mind's 
picture gallery ! The spire of the great cathe- 
dral had been witli me as a frequent presence 
during the last fifty years of my life, and this 
second visit has deepened every line of the im- 
pression, as Old Mortality refreshed the inscrip- 
tions on the tombstones of the Covenanters. I 
find that all these pictures which I have brought 
home with me to look at, with 

' ' that inward eye 
Wlucli is the bliss of solitude," 

are becoming clearer and brighter as the excite- 
ment of overcrowded days and weeks gradually 
calms down. I can he in those places where I 
passed days and nights, and became habituated 
to the sight of the cathedral, or of the Church 
of the Holy Trinity, at morning, at noon, at 
evening, whenever I turned my e3^es in its direc- 
tion. I often close my eyelids, and startle my 
household by saying, " Now I am in Salisbury," 



SALISBURY. — BRIGHTON. • 201 

or " Now I am in Stratford." It is a blessed 
thing to bo able, in the twilight of years, to il- 
luminate the soul with such visions. The 
Charles, which flows beneath my windows, which 
I look upon between the words of the sentence 
I am now writing, only turning my head as I sit 
at my table, — the Charles is hardly more real' 
to me than Shakespeare's Avon, since I floated 
on its still waters, or strayed along its banks 
and saw the cows reflected in the smooth ex- 
panse, their legs upward, as if they were walking 
the skies as the flies walk the ceiling. Salisbury 
Cathedral stands as substantial in my thouglit 
as our own King's Chapel, since I slumbered 
by its side, and arose in the morning to find it 
still there, and not one of those unsubstantial 
fabrics built by the architect of dreams. 

On Thursday, the 2 2d of July, we left Salis- 
bury for Brighton, where we were to be guests 
at Arnold House, the residence of our kind host. 
Here we passed another delightful week, with 
everything around us to contribute to our quiet 
comfort and happiness. The most thoughtful 
of entertainers, a house filled with choice works 



202 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of art, fine paintings, and wonderful pottery, 
pleasant walks and drives, a visitor now and 
then, Mr. and Mrs. Goldwin Smith among the 
nmnber, rest and peace in a magnificent city- 
built for enjoyment, — what more could we 
have asked to make our visit memorable? 
Many watering-places look forlorn and desolate 
in the intervals of " the season." This was not 
the time of Brighton's influx of visitors, but the 
city was far from dull. The houses are very 
large, and have the grand air, as if meant for 
princes ; the shops are well supplied ; the salt 
breeze comes in fresh and wholesome, and the 
noble esplanade is lively with promenaders and 
Bath chairs, some of them occupied by people 
evidently ill or presumably lame, some, I sus- 
pect, employed by healthy invalids who are too 
lazy to walk. I took one myself, drawn by an 
old man, to see hov/ I liked it, and found it 
very convenient, but I was tempted to ask him 
to change places and let me drag him. 

With the aid of the guide-book I could de- 
scribe the wonders of the pavilion and the vari- 
ous changes which have come over the great 
watering-place. The grand walks, the two piers, 



BRIGHTON. 203 

the aquarium, and all the great sights which are 
shown to strangers deserve full attention from 
the tourist who writes for other travellers, but 
none of these thing's seem to me so interesting: as 
what we saw and heard in a little hamlet which 
has never, so far as I know, been vulgarized by 
sight -seers. AYe drove in an open carriage, 

— Mr. and Mrs. Willett, A , and myself, 

— into the country, which soon became bare, 
sparsely settled, a long succession of rounded 
hills and hollows. These are the South Downs, 
from which comes the famous mutton known all 
over England, not unknown at the table of our 
Saturday Club and other well-spread boards. 
After a drive of ten miles or more we arrived 
at a little '' settlement," as we Americans should 
call it, and drove up to the door of a modest 
parsonage, where dwells the shepherd of the 
South Down flock of Christian worshippers. I 
hope that the good clergyman, if he ever hap- 
pens to see what I am writing, will pardon me 
for making mention of his hidden retreat, which 
he himself speaks of as " one of the remoter 
nooks of the old country." Nothing I saw 
in England brought to my mind Goldsmith's 



204 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

picture of ^' the man to all the country dear," 
and his surroundings, like this visit. The 
church dates, if 1 remember right, from the 
thirteenth century. Some of its stones show- 
marks, as it is thought, of having belonged to a 
Saxon edifice. The massive leaden font is of a 
very great antiquity. In the wall of the church 
is a narrow opening, at which the priest is sup- 
posed to have sat and listened to the confession 
of the sinner on the outside of the building. 
The dead lie all around the church, under stones 
bearing the dates of several centuries. One epi- 
taph, which the unlettered Muse must have dic- 
tated, is worth recording. After giving the chief 
slumberer's name the epitaph adds, — 

" Here lies on either side, the remains of each of his former 
wives." 

Those of a third have found a resting-place close 
by, behind him. 

It seemed to me that Mr. Bunner's young 
man in search of Arcady might look for it here 
with as good a chance of being satisfied as any- 
where I can think of. But I suppose that men 
and women and especially boys, would prove to 
be a o-ood deal like the rest of the world, if one 



BRIGHTON. 205 

lived here long enough to learn all about them. 
One thing I can safely say, — an English man 
or boy never goes anywhere without his fists. I 
saw a boy of ten or twelve years, whose pleasant 
face attracted my attention. I said to the rec- 
tor, " That is a fine-looking little fellow, and I 
should think an intelligent and amiable kind of 
boy." " Yes," he said, " yes ; he can strike 
from the shoulder pretty well, too. I had to 
stop him the other day, indulging in that exer- 
cise." Well, I said to myself, we have not yet 
reached the heaven on earth which I was fancy- 
ing might be embosomed in this peaceful-looking 
hollow. Youthful angels can hardly be in the 
habit of striking from the shoulder. But the 
well-known phrase, belonging to the pugilist 
rather than to the priest, brought me back from 
the ideal world into which my imagination had 
wandered. 

Our week at Brighton was passed in a very 
quiet but most enjoyable way. It could not be 
otherwise with such a host and hostess, always 
arranging everything with reference to our well- 
being and in accordance with our wishes. I be- 
came very fond of the esplanade, such a public 



206 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

walk as I never saw anything to compare with. 
In these tranquil days, and long, honest nights 
of sleep, the fatigues of what we had been 
through were forgotten, the scales showed that 
we were becoming less ethereal every day, and 
we were ready for another move. 

We bade good-by to our hosts with the most 
grateful and the warmest feeling towards them, 
after a month of delightful companionship and 
the experience of a hospitality almost too gener- 
ous to accept, but which they were pleased to 
look upon as if we were doing them a favor. 

On the 29tli of July we found ourselves once 
more in London. 



VL 

We found our old quarters all ready and 
awaiting us. Mrs. Mackcllar's motherly smile, 
Sam's civil bow, and the rosy cheeks of many- 
buttoned Eobert made us feel at home as soon 
as we crossed the threshold. 

The dissolution of Parliament had brought 
" the season " abruptly to an end. London was 
empty. There were three or four millions of 
people in it, but the great houses were for the 
most part left without occupants except their 
liveried guardians. We kept as quiet as pos- 
sible, to avoid all engagements. For now we 
were in London for London itself, to do shop- 
ping, to see sights, to be our own master and 
mistress, and to live as independent a life as we 
possibly could. 

The first thing we did on the day of our 
arrival was to take a hansom and drive over 
to Chelsea, to look at the place where Carlyle 
passed the larger part of his life. The whole 



208 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

region about him must have been greatly 
changed during his residence there, for the 
Thames Embankment was constructed long af- 
ter he removed to Chelsea. We had some lit- 
tle difficulty in finding the place we were in 
search of. Cheyne (pronounced " Chainie ") 
Walk is a somewhat extended range of build- 
ings. Cheyne Row is a passage which reminded 
me a little of my old habitat, Montgomery 
Place, now Bosworth Street. Presently our at- 
tention was drawn to a marble medallion por- 
trait on the corner building of an ordinary-look- 
ing row of houses. This was the head of Car- 
lyle, and an inscription informed us that he 
lived for forty-seven years in the house No. 24 
of this row of buildings. Since Carlyle's home 
life has been made public, he has appeared to us 
in a different aspect from the ideal one which 
he had before occupied. He did not show to 
as much advantage under the Boswellizing pro- 
cess as the dogmatist of the last century, dear 
old Dr. Johnson. But he remains not the less 
one of the really interesting men of his genera- 
tion, — a man about whom we wish to know 
all that we have a right to know. 



CHELSEA. — CARLYLE. 209 

The sight of an old nest over which two 
or three winters have passed is a rather sad- 
dening one. The dingy three-story brick house 
in which Carlyle lived, one in a block of sim- 
ilar houses, was far from attractive. It was 
untenanted, neglected ; its windows were un- 
washed, a pane of glass was broken ; its 
threshold appeared untrodden, its whole aspect 
forlorn and desolate. Yet there it stood be- 
fore me, all covered with its associations as an 
ivy-clad tower with its foliage. I wanted to 
see its interior, but it looked as if it did not 
expect a tenant and would not welcome a vis- 
itor. Was there nothing but this forbidding 
house-front to make the place alive with some 
breathing memory? I saw crossing the street 
a middle-aged woman, — a decent body, who 
looked as if she might have come from the lower 
level of some not opulent but respectable house- 
hold. She might have some recollection of an 
old man who was once her neighbor. I asked 
her if she remembered Mr. Carlyle. Indeed she 
did, she told us. She used to see him often, in 
front of his house, putting bits of bread on the 
railing for the birds. He did not like to see 



210 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

anything wasted, she said. The merest scrap 
of information, but genuine and pleasing ; an 
instantaneous photograph only, but it makes a 
pretty vignette in the volume of my reminis- 
cences. There are many considerable men in 
every generation of mankind, but not a great 
number who are personally interesting, — not a 
great many of whom we feel that we cannot 
know too much ; whose foibles, even, we care to 
know about ; whose shortcomings we try to ex- 
cuse ; who are not models, but whose special 
traits make them attractive. Carlyle is one of 
these few, and no revelations can prevent his 
interesting us. He was not quite finished in 
his prenatal existence. The bricklayer's mor- 
tar of his father's calling stuck to his fingers 
through life, but only as the soil he turned with 
his ploughshare clung to the fingers of Burns. 
We do not wish either to have been other than 
what he was. Their breeding brings them to 
the average level, carries them more nearly to 
the heart, makes them a simpler expression of 
our common humanity. As we rolled in the 
cars by Ecclefechan, I strained my eyes to take 
in every point of the landscape, every cottage. 



CHELSEA. — CARL YLE. 21 1 

every spire, if by any chance I could find one 
in that lonely region. There was not a bridge 
nor a bit of masonry of any kind that I did not 
eagerly scrutinize, to see if it were solid and 
honest enough to have been built by Carlyle's 
father. Solitary enough the country looked. I 
admired Mr. Emerson's devotion in seeking 
his friend in his bare home among what he de- 
scribes as the "desolate heathery hills" about 
Craigenputtock, which were, I suppose, much 
like the region through which we were passing. 
It is one of the regrets of my life that I never 
saw or heard Carlyle. Nature, who seems to 
be fond of trios, has given us three dogmatists, 
all of whom greatly interested their own gener- 
ation, and whose personality, especially in the 
case of the first and the last of the trio, still in- 
terests us, — Johnson, Coleridge, and Carlyle. 
Each was an oracle in his way, but unfortu- 
nately oracles are fallible to their descendants. 
The author of " Taxation no Tyranny " had 
wholesale opinions, and pretty harsh ones, about 
us Americans, and did not soften them in ex- 
pression : " Sir, they are a race of convicts, 
and ought to be thankful for anything we allow 



212 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

tliem short of hanging." We smile compla- 
cently when we read this outburst, which Mr. 
Croker calls in question, but which agrees with 
his saying in the presence of Miss Seward, " I 
am willing to love all mankind except an Amer- 
ican.'''' 

A generation or two later comes along Cole- 
ridge, with his circle of reverential listeners. 
He says of Johnson that his fame rests princi- 
pally upon Bos well, and that " his how-icoio man- 
ner must have had a good deal to do with the 
effect produced." As to Coleridge himself, his 
contemporaries hardly know how to set bounds 
to their exaltation of his genius, Dibdin comes 
pretty near going into rhetorical hysterics in 
reporting a conversation of Coleridge's to which 
he listened : " The auditors seemed to be wrapt 
in wonder and delight, as one observation more 
profound, or clothed in more forcible language, 
than another fell from his tongue. . . . As I 
retired homeward I thought a second Johnson 
had visited the earth to make wise the sons of 
men." And De Quincey speaks of him as " the 
largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest 
and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that 



CHELSEA. — CARL YLE, 213 

has yet existed amono^st men. " One is some- 
times tempted to wish that the superlative could 
be abolished, or its use allowed only to old ex- 
perts. What are men to do when thoy get to 
heaven, after having exhausted their vocabulary 
of admiration on earth ? 

Now let us come down to Carlyle, and see 
what he says of Coleridge. We need not take 
those conversational utterances which called 
down the wrath of Mr. Swinburne, and found 
expression in an epigram which violates all the 
proprieties of literary language. Look at the 
full-length portrait in the Life of Sterling. 
Each oracle denies his predecessor, each magi- 
cian breaks the wand of the one who went be- 
fore him. There were Americans enough ready 
to swear by Carlyle until he broke his staff in 
meddling with our anti-slavery conflict, and bur- 
ied it so many fathoms deep that it could never 
be fished out again. It is rather singular that 
Johnson and Carlyle should each of them have 
shipwrecked his sagacity and shown a terrible 
leak in his moral sensibilities on coming in con- 
tact with American rocks and currents, with 
which neither had any special occasion to con- 



'214 orn nrxDRED pays in Europe. 

corn himself, and wliioh both had a ij^roat deal 
better have steered elear of. 

But here I stand onee more before the homo 
of the long-suffering, mueh-laboring, loud-com- 
plaining Ileraclitus of his time, whose very smile 
had a grlniness in it more ominous than his 
scowl. Poor man ! Dyspeptic on a diet of oat- 
meal porridge ; kept wide awake by crowing 
cocks ; drummed out of his wits by long-contin- 
ned piano-pounding ; sharp of speech, I fear, to 
his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good 
as she got ! I hope I am inistalvcn about their 
every-day relations, but again I say, poor man ! 
— for all his complaining must have meant real 
discomfort, which a man of genius feels not less, 
certainly, than a common mortal. 

I made a second visit to the place where he 
lived, but I saw nothing more than at the first. 
I wanted to cross the threshold over which he 
walked so often, to see the noise-proof room in 
which he used to write, to look at the chimney- 
place down which the soot came, to sit where ho 
used to sit and smoke his pipe, and to conjure 
lip his wraith to look in once more upon Lis old 
deserted dwelling. That vision was denied me. 



LONDON. — r HE PA ILK. 2\') 

After visiting Cholsoa wo drovo round through 
Regent's Park. I suppose that if we use tlie 
superlative in speaking of Hyde Park, Regent's 
Park will be the comparative, and Battersea 
Park the positive, ranking them in the descend- 
ing grades of their hierarchy. But this is my 
conjecture ordy, and the social geography of 
London is a subject which only one who has be- 
come familiarly acquainted with the place should 
speak of with any confidence. A stranger com- 
ing tf> our city might think it made little differ- 
ence whether his travelling Boston acquaintance 
lived in Alpha Avenue or in Omega Square, but 
he would have to learn that it is farther from 
one of these places to the other, a great deal 
farther, than it is from Beacon Street, Boston, 
to Fifth Avenue, New York. 

An American finds it a little galling to be 
told that he must not drive in his numhered 
hansom or four-wheeler except in certain por- 
tions of Hyde Park. If he is rich enough to 
keep his own carriage, or if he will pay the ex- 
tra price of a vehicle not vulgarized by being on 
the numbered list, he may drive anywhere that 
his Grace or his Lordship does, and perhaps 



21 G OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

have a menu sense of satisfaction at finding him- 
self in the chavniecl circle of exclusive " gignian- 
ity." It is a i)lcasuro to meet none but well- 
dressed and well-mannered people, in well-ap- 
pointed equipages. In the highroad of our own 
country, one is liable to fall in with people and 
conveyances that it is far from a pleasure to 
meet. I was once driving in an open carriage, 
with members of my family, towards my own 
house in the country town where I was then 
living. A cart drawn by oxen was in the road 
in front of us. Whenever we tried to pass, the 
men in it turned obliquely across the road and 
prevented us, and this was repeated again and 
again. I could have wished I had been driving 
in Hyde Park, where clowns and boors, with 
their carts and oxen, do not find admittance. 
Exclusiveness has its conveniences. 

The next day, as I was strolling through Bur- 
lington Arcade, I saw a figure just before me 
which I recognized as that of my townsman, 
Mr. Abbott Lawrence. He was accompanied 
by his son, who had just returned from a trip 
round the planet. There are three grades of 
recognition, entirely distinct from each other : 



LONDON, 217 

the meeting of two persons of diffcr(;nt couTitncs 
who speak the same language, — an American 
and an Kn^li.sliman, for instance ; the meeting 
of two Aniciicans from different cities, as of a 
Bostonian and a New Yorker or a Chicagonian ; 
and the meeting of two from the same city, as 
of two Bostonians. 

The difference of these recognitions may be 
illustrated by supposing certain travelling phi- 
losophical instruments, endowed with intelligence 
and the power of speech, to come together in 
their wanderings, — let us say in a restaurant 
of the Palais Koyal. " Very hot," says the talk- 
ing Fahrenheit (Thermometer^ from I^oston, 
and calls for an ice, which he plunges his Ijulb 
into and cools down. In comes an intelligent 
and socially disposed English Barometer. The 
two travellers greet each other, not exactly as 
old acquaintances, but each has heard very 
frequently about the other, and their relatives 
have been often associated. " We have a good 
deal in common," says the Barometer. " Of 
the same blood, as we may say ; quicksilver 
is thicker than water." " Yes," says the little 
Fahrenheit, " and we are both of the same mer- 



218 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

curial temperament." While tlieir columns are 
dancing up and down with laughter at this 
somewhat tepid and low^-pressurc pleasantry, 
there come in a New York Reaumur and a Cen- 
tigrade from Chicago. The Fahrenheit, which 
has got w^armcd up to temperate^ rises to sum- 
mer heat, and even a little above it. They en- 
joy each other's company mightily. To be sure, 
their scales differ, but have they not the same 
freezino- and the same boiling point? To be 
sure, each thinks his own scale is the true stan- 
dard, and at home they might get into a con- 
test about the matter, but here in a strange 
land they do not think of disputing. Now, while 
they are talking about America and their own 
local atmosphere and temperature, there comes 
in a second Boston Fahrenheit. The two of the 
same name look at each other for a moment, 
and rush together so eagerly that their bulbs 
are endangered. How well they understand 
each other ! Thirty-two degrees marks the 
freezing point. Two hundred and twelve marks 
the boiling point. They have the same scale, 
the same fixed points, the same record : no won- 
der they prefer each other's company ! 



LONDON. 219 

I hope that my reader has followed my illus- 
tration, and finished it off for himself. Let me 
give a few practical examples. An American 
and an Englishman meet in a foreign land. TPie 
Englishman has occasion to mention his weight, 
which he finds has gained in the course of his 
travels. " How much is it now ? " asks the 
American. " Fourteen stone. How much do you 
weigh ? " *' Within four pounds of two hun- 
dred." Neither of them takes at once any clear 
idea of what the other weighs. The Amei*ican 
has never thought of his own, or his friends', or 
anybody's weight in stonen of fourteen pounds. 
The Englishman has never thought of any one's 
weight in ^;ow7i(Z.s. They can calculate very 
easily with a slip of paper and a pencil, but not 
the less is their language but half intelligible as 
they speak and listen. The same thing is in a 
measure true of other matters they talk about. 
" It is about as large a space as the Common," 
says the Boston man. "It is as large as St. 
James's Park," says the Londoner. " As high 
as the State House," says the Bostonian, or " as 
tall as Bunker Hill Monument," or " about as 
big as the Frog Pond," where the Londoner 



220 OUR HUNDnED DAYS IN EUROrE. 

would take St. Paul's, the Nelson (Column, the 
S(M'pentine, as his standard of comparison. The 
diftVronoe of scale docs not stop here ; it runs 
through a great i)art of tlio objects of thought 
and conversation. An average AnuM'ican and 
an average Englishman are talking together, and 
one of them speaks of the beauty of a field of 
corn. They are thiidving of two entirely differ- 
ent objects : one of a billowy level of soft wav- 
ing wheat, or rye, or barley ; the other of a 
rustling forest of tall, jointed stalks, tossing 
their plumes and showing their silken epaulettes, 
as if every stem in the ordered ranks wcu-e a 
soldier in full regimentals. An Englishman 
planted for tholirst time in the middle of a well- 
grown field of Indian corn would feel as nuicli 
lost as the babes in the wood. Conversation be- 
tween two Londoners, two New Yorkers, two 
Bostonians, requires no foot-notes, which is a 
great advantage in their intercourse. 

To return from my digression and my illus- 
tration. I did not do a great deal of shopping 
myself while in London, being contented to have 
it done for me. But in the way of looking in at 
shop windows I did a very large business. Cer- 



LONDON. 221 

tain windows attracted mo })y a variety in unity 
which HurpaHHcjd anything I have Ixicn accus- 
tomed to. TIiuH one window showed every con- 
ceivable convenience that couhl be shaped in 
ivory, and nothing else. One shop had such a 
display of magnificent dressing-cases that I 
should have thougfit a whole royal family was 
setting out on its travels. I see the cost of one 
of them is two liundred and seventy guineas. 
Thirteen hundred and fifty dollars seems a good 
deal to pay for a dressing-case. 

On the other hand, some of the first-class 
tradesmen and workmen make no show wliat- 
ever. The tailor to whom I had credentials, 
and who proved highly satisfactory to me, as he 
had })roved to some of my countrymen and to 
Englishmen of high estate, had only one small 
sign, which was placed in one of his windows, 
and received his customers in a small room tliat 
would have made a closet for one of our stylish 
merchant tailors. 'J'he }>ootmaker to whom I 
went on good recommendation had hardly any- 
thing about his premises to remind one of his 
calling. He came into his studio, took my 
measure very carefully, and made me a pair of 



222 OUR nUXDRED DAYS IN KmOPE. 

wliat Avo oall Congress boots, wliloh littod \\A\ 
when oneo on my foot, bnt which it cost more 
trouble to got into and to got out of than I could 
express my feelings about without dangerously 
enlarging my limited vocabulary. 

Bond Street, Old and New, offered the most 
inviting windows, and I indulged almost to pro- 
fligacy in the prolonged inspection of their con- 
tents. Stretching my walk along New Bond 
Street till I came to a great intersecting tho- 
roughfare, I found myself in Oxford Street. 
Here the character of the shop windows changed 
at once. Utility and convenience took the place 
of show and splendor. Here 1 found various 
articles of use in a household, some of which 
wore now to me. It is very likely that I could 
have found most of them in our own Boston 
Cornhill, but one often overlooks things at home 
which at once arrest his attention when ho sees 
them in a strange plaee. I saw great numbers 
of illuminating contrivances, some of which 
pleased me by their arrangement of reflectors. 
Bryant and IMay's safety matches seemed to be 
used everywhere. I procured some in Boston 
with these names on the box, but the label said 



LONDON. 223 

they wore made in Sw^tdon, and tlioy fjiffuscd 
vapors that woro onougli to jnoduco asphyxia. 
I greatly admired somo of \)v. i>>roHser'8 water- 
cans and other contrivances, modelled more or 
less after the antique, but I found an abundant 
assortment of them here in Boston, and I have 
one I obtained here more original in desi'Ti 
and more serviceable in daily lise than any I 
saw in London. I should have regarded Wol- 
verhampton, as we glided through it, with more 
interest, if I had known at that time that the in- 
ventive \)\'. Dresser had his headquarters in tliat 
busy-looking town. 

One thing, at least, 1 learned from my London 
experience : better a small city where one knows 
all it has to offer, than a great city where one 
has no disinterested friend to direct him to the 
right places to find what he wants. But of course 
there are some grand magazines which are 
known all the world over, and which no one 
should leave London without entering as a 
looker-on, if not as a purchaser. 

There was one place 1 determined to visit, and 
one man I meant to see, before returning. The 
place was a certain book-store or book-shop, and 



224 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

the person was its proprietor, Mr. Bernard Qua- 
ritch. I was getting very much pressed for time, 
and I allowed ten minutes only for my visit. 1 
never had any dealings with Mr. Quaritch, but 
one of my near relatives had, and I had often 
received his catalogues, the scale of prices in 
which had given me an impression almost of 
sublimity. I found Mr. Bernard Quaritch at 
No. 15 Piccadilly, and introduced myself, not as 
one whose name he must know, but rather as a 
stranger, of whom he might have heard through 
my relative. The extensive literature of cata- 
logues is probably little known to most of my 
readers. I do not pretend to claim a thorough 
acquaintance with it, but I know the luxury of 
reading good catalogues, and such are those of 
Mr. Quaritch. I should like to deal with him ; 
for if he wants a handsome price for what he 
sells, he knows its value, and does not offer the 
refuse of old libraries, but, on the other hand, 
all that is most precious in them is pretty sure 
to pass through his hands, sooner or later. 

" Now, Mr. Quaritch," I said, after introdu- 
cing myself, " I have ten minutes to pass with 
you. You must not open a book ; if you do I 



LONDON. 225 

am lost, for I shall have to look at every illumi- 
nated capital, from the first leaf to the colophon." 
Mr. Quaritch did not open a single book, but let 
me look round his establishment, and answered 
my questions very courteously. It so happened 
that while I was there a gentleman came in 
whom I had previously met, — my namesake, 
Mr. Holmes, the Queen's librarian at Windsor 
Castle. My ten minutes passed very rapidly in 
conversation with these two experts in books, 
the bibliopole and the bibliothecary. No place 
that I visited made me feel more thoroughly 
til at I was in London, the great central mart of 
all that is most precious in the world. 

Leave at home all your guineas^ ye who 
enter here^ would be a good motto to put over 
his door, unless you have them in plenty and 
can spare them, in which case Take all your 
guineas with you would be a better one. For 
you can here get their equivalent, and more than 
their equivalent, in the choicest products of the 
press and the finest work of the illuminator, the 
illustrator, and the binder. You will be sorely 
tempted. But do not be surprised when you 
ask the price of the volume you may happen to 



226 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

fancy. Yon arc not Joaling with a houqiciniste 
of the Quais, in Paris. You are not foraging in 
an old book-shop of New York or Boston. Do 
not suppose that I undervahie these dealers in 
old and rare volumes. Many a nuich-prized 
rarity have I obtained from Drake and Biirn- 
liam and others of my townsmen, and from 
Denham in New York ; and in my student years 
many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus 
or an Elzevir, liave I found among the trumpery 
spread out on the 2)arapets of the quays. But 
there is a difference between going out on the 
Fourth of July with a militia nuisket to shoot 
any catbird or " chi])munk " that turns up in a 
piece of woods willilu a few miles of our own 
cities, and shooting partridges in a nobleman's 
preserves on the First of September. I confess 
to having felt a certain awe on entering the pre- 
cincts made sacred by their precious contents. 
The lord and master of so many Editiones 
I^rincipcs, the guardian of this great nursery 
full of Incnnahida^ did not seem to me like a 
simple tradesman. I felt that I was in the 
presence of the literary purveyor of vojiA and 
imperial libraries, the man before whom million- 



LONDON. 221 

aires tremble as they calculate, and billionaires 
pause and consider. I have recently received 
two of Mr. Quaritch's catalogues, from which I 
will give my reader an extract or two, to show 
him what kind of articles this prince of biblio- 
poles deals in. 

Perhaps you would like one of those romances 
which turned the head of Don (Quixote. Here 
is a volume which will be sure to please you. 
It is on one of his lesser lists, confined princi- 
pally to Spanish and Portuguese works : — 

" Amadls de Gaula . . . folio, gothic letter. 
First edition, unique . . . red morocco super 
extra, double with olive moroc-fo, richly gilt, 
tooled to an elegant (J roller design, gilt edges 
... in a neat case." 

A pretty present for a scholarly friend. A 
nice old book to cany home for one's own 
library. Two hundred pounds — one thousand 
dollars — will make you the happy owner of 
this volume. 

But if you would have also on your shelves 
the first edition of the " Cronica del famoso ca- 
baluero cid Ruy Diaz Campadero," not " richly 
gilt," not even bound in leather, but in " cloth 



228 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

boards," you will have to pay two hundred and 
ton pounds to become its proprietor. After 
this you will not be frightened by the thought 
of paying three hundred dollars for a little 
quarto giving an account of the Virginia Adven- 
turers. You will not shrink from the idea of 
giving something more than a hundred guineas 
for a series of Hogarth's plates. But when it 
comes to Number 1001 in the IMay catalogue, 
and you see that if you w^ould possess a first 
folio Shakespeare, " untouched by the hand of 
liny modern renovator," you must be prepared 
to pay seven hundred and eighty-five pounds, 
almost four thousand dollars, for the volume, it 
would not be surprising if you changed color 
and your knees shook under you. No doubt 
some brave man will be found to carry off that 
prize, in spite of the golden battery which de- 
fends it, perhaps to Cincinnati, or Chicago, or 
San Francisco. But do not be frightened. 
These Alpine heights of extravagance climb up 
from the hund)le valley where shillings and six- 
pences are all that are required to make you 
a purchaser. 

One beauty of the Old World shops is that 



LONDON. 229 

if a visitor oomes \nw\^ to the place where he 
left them fifty years before, he finds them, or 
has a great chance of finding them, just where 
they stood at his former visit. In driving down 
to the old city, to the place of business of the 
Barings, I found many streets little changed. 
Temple Bar was gone, and the much-abused 
griffm stood in its place. There was a shop 
close to Temple Bar, where, in 1834, I had 
bought some brushes. I had no difficulty in 
finding Front's, and I could not do less than go 
in and buy some more brushes. I did not ask 
the young man who served me how tlie old 
shopkeeper who attended to my wants on the 
earlier occasion was at this time. But I thought 
what a different color the locks these brushes 
smooth show from those that knew their prede- 
cessors in the earlier decade ! 

I ought to have made a second visit to the 
Tower, so tenderly spoken of by Artemus Ward 
as " a sweet boon," so vividly remembered by 
me as the scene of a personal encounter with 
one of the animals then kept in the Tower me- 
nagerie. But the project added a stone to the 
floor of the underground thoroughfare which is 
paved with good intentions. 



230 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

St. PauFs I must and did visit. The most 
striking addition since I was there is the mas- 
sive monument to the Duke of Wellington. 
The great temple looked rather bare and un- 
sympathetic. Poor Dr. Johnson, sitting in semi- 
nude exposure, looked to me as unhapj^y as our 
own half-naked Washington at the national 
capital. The Judas of Matthew Arnold's poem 
would have cast his cloak over those marble 
shoulders, if he had found himself in St. Paul's, 
and have earned another respite. We brought 
away little, I fear, except the grand effect of 
the dome as we looked up at it. It gives us a 
greater idea of height than the sky itself, which 
we have become used to looking upon. 

A second visit to the National Gallery was 

made in company with A . It was the 

repetition of an attempt at a draught from the 
Cup of Tantalus. I was glad of a sight of the 
Botticellis, of which I had heard so much, and 
others of the more recently acquired paintings 
of the great masters ; of a sweeping glance at 
the Turners ; of a look at the well-remembered 
Ilogarths and the memorable portraits by Sir 
Joshua. I carried away a confused mass of im- 



LONDON. 231 

prcssions, mucli as the soldiers that sack a city 
go off with all the precious things they can 
snatch up, huddled into clothes-bags and pillow- 
cases. I am reminded, too, of Mr. Galton's 
composite portraits ; a thousand glimpses, as one 
passes through the long halls lined with paint- 
ings, all blending in one not unpleasing general 
effect, out of which emerges from time to time 
some single distinct image. 

In the same way we passed through the ex- 
hibition of paintings at the Koyal Academy. I 

noticed thr.t A paid special attention to the 

portraits of young ladies by John Sargent and 
by Collier, while I was more particularly struck 
with the startling portrait of an ancient person- 
age in a full suit of wrinkles, such as Kembrandt 
used to bring out with wonderful effect. Hunt- 
ing in couples is curious and instructive ; the 
scent for this or that kind of game is sure to be 
very different in the two individuals. 

I made but two brief visits to the British 
Museum, and I can easily instruct my reader so 
that he will have no difficulty, if he will follow 
my teaching, in learning how not to see it. 
When he has a spare hour at his disposal, let 



232 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

liim drop in at the Museum, and wander among 
its books and its various collections. He will 
know as much about it as the fly that buzzes in 
at one window and out at another. If I were 
asked whether I brought away anything from 
my two visits, I should say, Certainly I did. 
The fly sees some things, not very intelligently, 
but he cannot help seeing them. The great 
round reading-room, with its silent students, 
impressed me very much. I looked at once for 
the Elgin Marbles, but casts and photographs 
and engravings had made me familiar with their 
chief features. I thought I knew something of 
the sculptures brought from Nineveh, but I was 
astonished, almost awe-struck, at the sight of 
those mighty images which mingled with the 
visions of the Hebrew prophets. I did not 
maiwel more at the skill and labor expended 
upon them by the Assyrian artists than I did at 
the enterprise and audacity which had brought 
them safely from the mounds under which they 
were buried to the light of day and the heart of 
a great modern city. I never thought that I 
should live to see the Birs Nimroud laid open, 
and the tablets in which the history of Nebu- 



LONDON. — THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 233 

chadnczzar was rec.ortlcd spread before nic. 
The Empire of the Spade in the world of liis- 
tory was founded at Nineveh by Layard, a great 
province added to it by Schliemann, and its 
boundary extended by numerous explorers, some 
of whom are diligently at work at the present 
day. I feel very grateful that many of its reve- 
lations have been made since I have been a ten- 
ant of the travelling residence which holds so 
many secrets in its recesses. 

There is one lesson to be got from a visit of 
an hour or two to the Ihitish Museum, — 
namely, the fathomless abyss of our own igno- 
rance. One is almost ashamed of his little pal- 
try heartbeats in the presence of the rushing 
and roaring torrent of Niagara. So if he has 
published a little book or two, collected a few 
fossils, or coins, or vases, he is crushed bv the 
vastness of the treasures in the library and the 
collections of this universe of knowledge. 

I have shown how not to see the British 
Museum ; I will tell how to see it. 

Take lodgings next door to it, — in a garret, 
if you cannot afford anything better, — and pass 
all your days at the Museum during the whole 



234 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

period of your luitiiriil life. At threescore and 
ten you will liiivc some faint conception of tlio 
contents, significance, and value of this great 
British institution, which is as nearly as any one 
si)()t the nocud vital of human civilization, a stab 
at which by the dagger of anarchy would fitly 
begin the reign of chaos. 

On the 3d of August, a gentleman, Mr. Wed- 
more, who had promised to be my guide to 
certain interesting localities, called for me, and 
we took a hansom for the old city. The first 
place we visited was the Temple, a collection of 
buildings with intricate passages between them, 
some of the edifices reminding me of our col- 
lege dormitories. One, however, was a most ex- 
traordinary exception, — the wonderful Temple 
church, or rather the ancient part of it which is 
left, the round temple. We had some trouble 
to get into it, but at last succeeded in finding a 
slip of a girl, the daughter of the janitor, who 
unlocked the door for us. It affected my imagi- 
nation strangely to see this girl of a dozen years 
old, or thereabouts, moving round among the 
monuments which had kept their place there for 
some six or seven hundred years ; for the church 



LONDON. 235 

was LullL In the year 1185, and tlio most rooont 
of llio cnisadci-H' nionutnents is said to date as 
far back as 1241. Tlieir effigies have lain in 
this vast city, and passed unharmed througli all 
its convulsions. The Great Fire must have 
crackled very loud in their stony ears, and tlj(jy 
must have shaken day and niglit, as tlie bodies 
of the vi(;tiins of the Plague were rattled over 
the pavements. 

Near the Temple church, in a green spot 
among the buildings, a plain stone laid Hat on 
the turf bears these words : " Here lies Oliver 
Goldsmith." 1 b<'lieve doubt h;is beciu thrown 
uj)on the statement that Goldsmith was buried 
in that place, but, as some ])oet ought to have 
written, 

Whf!r<! (loul>t, is fliH<!iK;li;uitrnont 
' T i.s wiwloin t,o belie v<j. 

We do not " drop a tear " so often as our Delia 
Cruscan predecessors, but the memory of the 
author of the " Vicar of Wakefield " stirred ray 
feelings more than a wliole army of crusaders 
would liave done. A j)i'otty rough set of fili- 
busters they were, no doubt. 

Tlie whole group to which Goldsmith jjclongcd 



236 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

came up before me, and as the centre of that 
group the great Dr. Johnson ; not the Johnson 
of the " Eambler," or of " The Vanity of Human 
Wishes," or even of '* RasseLas," but Boswell's 
Johnson, dear to all of us, the " Grand Old 
]\Lin " of his time, whose foibles we care more for 
than for most great men's virtues. Fleet Street, 
whi^h he loved so warmly, was close by. Bolt 
Court, entered from it, where he lived for many 
of his last years, and where he died, was the 
next place to visit. I found Fleet Street a good 
deal like Washington Street as I remember it 
in former years. When I came to the place 
pointed out as Bolt Court, I could hardly believe 
my eyes that so celebrated a place of residence 
should be entered by so humble a passageway. 
I was very sorry to find that No. 3, where he 
lived, was demolished, and a new building 
erected in its place. h\ one of the other houses 
in this court he is said to have labored on his 
dictionary. Near by was a building of mean 
aspect, in which Goldsmith is said to have at 
one time resided. But my kind conductor did 
not profess to be well acquainted with the local 
antiquities of this quarter of London. 



LONDON. — THE COLONIAL EXUIBITION. 2.''.7 

If I had a long future before me, I should 
like above all things to study London with a 
dark lantern, so to speak, myself in deepest 
shadow and all I wanted to see in clearest light. 
Then I should want time, time, time. For it is 
a sad fact that sight-seeing as commonly done 
is one of the most wearying things in the world, 
and takes the life out of any but the sturdiest 
or the most elastic natures more efficiently than 
would a reasonable amount of daily exercise on 
a treadmill. In my younger days I used to find 
that a visit to the gallery of the Louvre was 
followed by more fatigue and exhaustion than 
the same amount of time spent in walking the 
wards of a hospital. 

Another grand sight there was, not to be over- 
looked, namely, the Colonial Exhibition. The 
popularity of this immense show was very great, 

and we found ourselves, A and I, in the 

midst of a vast throng, made up of respectable 
and comfortable looking people. It was not 
strange that the multitude flocked to this exhi- 
bition. There was a jungle, with its (stuffed) 
monsters, — tigers, serpents, elephants ; there 
were carvings which may well have cost a life 



238 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

apiece, and stuffs which none but an empress 
or a millionairess would dare to look at. All 
the arts of the East were there in their perfec- 
tion, and some of the artificers were at their 
work. We had to content ourselves with a 
mere look at all these wonders. It was a pity ; 
instead of going to these fine shows tired, sleepy, 
wanting repose more than anything else, we 
should have come to them fresh, in good condi- 
tion, and had many days at our disposal. I 
learned more in a visit to the Japanese exhibi- 
tion in Boston than I should have learned in 
half a dozen half-awake strolls through this mul- 
titudinous and most imposing collection of all 

'* The gorgeous East with richest hand 
Showers on her kings," 

and all the masterpieces of its wonder-working 
artisans. 

One of the last visits we paid before leaving 
London for a week in Paris was to the South 
Kensington Museum. Think of the mockery of 
giving one hour to such a collection of works of 
art and wonders of all kinds ! Why should I 
consider it worth while to say that we went there 
at all ? All manner of objects succeeded each 



LONDON. — SOUTH KENSINGTON. 239 

other in a long scries of dissolving views, so to 
sj)eak, nothing or next to nothing having a 
chance to leave its individual impress. In the 
battle for life which took place in my memory, 
as it always does among the multitude of claim- 
ants for a permanent hold, I find that two ob- 
jects came oyt survivors of the contest. The 
first is the noble cast of the column of Trajan, 
vast in dimensions, crowded with history in its 
most striking and enduring form ; a long array 
of figures representing in unquestioned realism 
the military aspect of a Roman army. The sec- 
ond case of survival is thus described in the cat- 
alogue : "An altar or shrine of a female saint, 
recently acquired from Padua, is also ascribed 
to the same sculptor [Donatello]. This very 
valuable work of art had for many years been 
used as a drinking-trough for horses. A hole 
has been roughly pierced in it." I thought the 
figure was the most nearly perfect image of 
heavenly womanhood that I had ever looked 
upon, and I could have gladly given my whole 
hour to sitting — I could almost say kneeling — 
before it in silent contemplation. I found the 
curator of the Museum, Mr. Soden Smith, shared 



240 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

my feelings with reference to the celestial love- 
liness of this figure. Which is best, to live in 
a country where such a work of art is taken for 
a horse-trough, or in a country where the pro- 
ducts from the studio of a self-taught handi- 
craftsman, equal to the shaping of a horse-trough 
and not much more, are put forward as works 
of art ? 

A little time before my visit to England, be- 
fore I had even thought of it as a possibility, I 
had the honor of having two books dedicated to 
me by two English brother physicians. One of 
these two gentlemen was Dr. Walshe, of whom 
I shall speak hereafter ; the other was Dr. J. 
Milner Fothergill. The name Fothergill was 
familiar to me from my boyhood. My old towns- 
man, Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who died in 
1846 at the age of ninety-two, had a great deal 
to say about his relative Dr. John Fothergill, 
the famous Quaker physician of the last century, 
of whom Benjamin Franklin said, " I can hardly 
conceive that a better man ever existed." Dr. 
and Mrs. Fothergill sent us some beautiful flow- 
ers a little before we left, and when I visited 
him he gave me a medallion of his celebrated 
kinsman. 



LONDON. 241 

London is a place of mysteries. Looking out 
of one of the windows at the back of Dr. Fother- 
gill's house, I saw an immense wooden blind, 
such as we have on our windows in summer, but 
reaching from the ground as high as the top of 
the neighboring houses. While admitting the 
air freely, it shut the property to which it be- 
longed completely from sight. I asked the 
meaning of this extraordinary structure, and 
learned that it was put up by a great nobleman, 
of whose subterranean palace and strange seclu- 
sion I had before heard. Common report at- 
tributed his unwillingness to be seen to a disfig- 
uring malady with which he was said to be 
afflicted. The story was that he was visible 
only to his valet. But a lady of quality, whom 
I met in this country, told me she had seen him, 
and observed nothing to justify it. These old 
countries are full of romances and legends and 
diahleries of all sorts, in which truth and lies 
are so mixed that one does not know what to 
believe. What happens behind the high walls 
of the old cities is as much a secret as were the 
doings inside the prisons of the Inquisition. 

Little mistakes sometimes cause us a deal 



242 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of trouble. This time it was the presence or 
absence of a single letter which led us to fear 
that an important package destined to America 
had miscarried. There were two gentlemen un- 
wittingly involved in the confusion. On inquir- 
ing for the package at Messrs. Low, the publish- 
ers, Mr. Watts, to whom I thought it had been 
consigned, was summoned. He knew nothing 
about it, had never heard of it, was evidently 
utterly ignorant of us and our affairs. While 
we were in trouble and uncertainty, our Boston 
friend, Mr. James K. Osgood, came in. " Oh," 
said he, " it is Mr. Watt you want, the agent of 
a Boston firm," and gave us the gentleman's 
address. I had confounded Mr. Watt's name 
with Mr. Watts's name. " W'at 's in a name ? " 
A great deal sometimes. I wonder if I shall be 
pardoned for quoting six lines from one of my 
after-dinner poems of long ago : — 

— One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, 

One trivial letter ruins all, left out ; 

A knot can change a felon into clay, 

A not will save him, spelt without the k ; 

The smallest word has some unguarded spot, 

And danger lurks in i without a dot. 



LONDON. 243 

I should find it hard to account for myself 
during our two short stays in London in the 
month of August, separated by the week we 
passed in Paris. The ferment of continued over- 
excitement, calmed very much by our rest in the 
various places I have mentioned, had not yet 
wholly worked itself off. There was some of 
that everlasting shopping to be done. There 
were photographs to be taken, a call here and 
there to be made, a stray visitor now and then, 
a walk in the morning to get back the use of the 
limbs which had been too little exercised, and a 
drive every afternoon to one of the parks, or the 
Thames Embankment, or other locality. After 
all this, an honest night's sleep served to round 
out the day, in which little had been effected 
besides making a few purchases, writing a few 
letters, reading the papers, the Boston " Weekly 
Advertiser " among the rest, and making ar- 
rangements for our passage homeward. 

The sights we saw were looked upon for so 
short a time, most of them so very superficially, 
that I am almost ashamed to say that I have 
been in the midst of them and brought home so 
little. I remind myself of my boyish amusement 



244 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

of sMjiplng stones, — throwing a flat stone so 
that it shall only touch the water, but touch it 
in half a dozen places before it comes to rest be- 
neath the smooth surface. The drives we took 
showed us a thousand objects which arrested our 
attention. Every street, every bridge, every 
building, every monument, every strange vehicle, 
every exceptional personage, was a show which 
stimulated our curiosity. For we had not as yet 
changed our Boston eyes for London ones, and 
very common sights were spectacular and dra- 
matic to us. I remember that one of our New 
England country boys exclaimed, when he first 
saw a block of city dwellings, '' Darn it all, who 
ever see anything like that 'are ? Sich a lot o' 
haousen all stuck together ! " I must explain 
that " haousen " used in my early days to be as 
common an expression in speaking of houses 
among our country-folk as its phonetic equiva- 
lent ever was in Saxony. I felt not unlike that 
country-boy. 

In thinking of how much I missed seeing, I 
sometimes have said to myself, " Oh, if the car- 
pet of the story in the Arabian Nights would 
only take me up and carry me to London for one 



LONDON. 245 

week, — just one short week, — setting me down 
fresh from qniet, wholesome living, in my usual 
good condition, and bringing me back at the 
end of it, what a different account I could give 
of my experiences I But it is just as well as it 
is. Younger eyes have studied and will study, 
more instructed travellers have pictured and 
will picture, the great metropolis from a hundred 
different points of view. No person can be said 
to know London. The most that any one can 
claim is that he knows something of it. I am 
now just going to leave it for another great capi- 
tal, but in my concluding pages I shall return 
to Great Britain, and give some of the general 
impressions left by what I saw and heard in our 
mother country. 



VII. 

Straitened as we were for time, it was im- 
possible to return home without a glimpse, at 
least, of Paris. Two precious years of mj early 
manhood wore spent there under the reign of 
Louis Philippe, king of the French, le Roi Cito- 
yen. I felt that I must look once more on the 
places I knew so well, — once more before shut- 
ting myself up in the world of recollections. It 
is hardly necessary to say that a lady can always 
find a little shopping, and generally a good deal 
of it, to do in Paris. So it was not difficult to 
persuade my daughter that a short visit to that 
city was the next step to be taken. 

We left London on the 5tli of August to go 
via Folkestone and Boulogne. The passage 
across the Channel was a very smooth one, and 
neither of us suffered any inconvenience. Bou- 
logne as seen from the landing did not show to 
great advantage. I fell to thinking of Bruni- 
mel, and what a satisfaction it would have been 



no ULOCNK. — PA lUS. 247 

to treat him to a good (liiiiu;r, and set liiin talk- 
ing abont the clays of the llegoney. Jionlogno 
was all Brummel in my assoeiatious, jnst as 
Calais was all Sterne. I find evcrywluire tliat 
it is a distinetive })ersonality wliicli makes nio 
want to linger round a spot, more tlian an im- 
portant historical event. Tliere is not nuich 
worth remembering about IVrummel ; but liis 
audacity, his starched ncckclotli, his assumptions 
and their success, make him a curious subject 
for tlie student of human nature. 

Leaving London at twenty minutes before ten 
in the forenoon, w(^ arrived in Paris at six in the 
afternoon. I could not say that the rc^gion of 
France through which we jiassed was piuudlaily 
attractive. 1 saw no fine trees, no j)retty cot- 
tages, like those so common in Kngland. There 
was little which an artist would be tempted to 
sketch, or a traveller by the railroad would bo 
likely to remember. 

The phujc where we had engaged lodgings 
was Hotel d'Orient, in the Kue Daunou. The 
situation was convenient, v(!ry \w\\y the l^lace 
Vendomc and the Kue de la Taix. But the 
house was undergoing renovations which made 



248 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

it as unpresentable as a moulting fowl. Scrub- 
bing, painting of blinds, and other perturbing 
processes did all they could to make it uncom- 
fortable. The courtyard was always sloppy, and 
the whole condition of things reminded me for- 
cibly of the state of Mr. Briggs's household 
while the mason was carrying out the complex 
operations which began with the application of 
" a little compo." (I hope all my readers 
remember Mr. Briggs, whose adventures as told 
by the pencil of John Leech are not unworthy 
of comparison with those of Mr. Pickwick as 
related by Dickens.) Barring these unfortu- 
nate conditions, the hotel was commendable, and 
when in order would be a desirable place of tem- 
porary residence. 

It was the dead season of Paris, and every- 
thing had the air of suspended animation. The 
solitude of the Place YendSme was something 
oppressive ; I felt, as I trod its lonely sidewalk, 
as if I were wandering through Tadmor in the 
Desert. We were indeed as remote, as un- 
friended, — I will not say as melancholy or as 
slow, — as Goldsmith by the side of the lazy 
Scheldt or the wandering Po. Not a soul did 



PARTS. 249 

either of us know in that great city. Our most 
intimate relations were with the people of the 
hotel and with the drivers of the fiacres. These 
last were a singular looking race of beings. 
Many of them had a dull red complexion, 
almost brick color, which must have some 
general cause. I questioned whether the red 
wine could have something to do with it. They 
wore glazed hats, and drove shabby vehicles for 
the most part ; their horses would not compare 
with those of the London hansom drivers, and 
they themselves were not generally inviting in 
aspect, though we met with no incivility from 
any of them. One, I remember, was very 
voluble, and over-explained everything, so that 
we became afraid to ask him a question. They 
were fellow-creatures with whom one did not 
naturally enter into active sympathy, and the 
principal point of interest about the fiacre and 
its arrangements was whether the horse was 
fondest of trotting or of walking. In one of 
our drives we made it a point to call upon our 
Minister, Mr. McLane, but he was out of town. 
We did not bring a single letter, but set off ex- 
actly as if we were on a picnic. 



250 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

While A and her attendant went about 

making their purchases, I devoted myself to 
the sacred and pleasing task of reviving old 
memories. One of the first places I visited 
was the house I lived in as a student, which in 
my English friend's French was designated as 
"Noomero sankont sank Roo Monshure ler 
Pranse." I had been told that the whole region 
thereabout had been transformed by the creation 
of a new boulevard. I did not find it so. There 
was the house, the lower part turned into a 
shop, but there were the windows out of which 
I used to look along the Rue Vaugirard, — au 
troisieme the first year, au second the second 
year. Why should I go mousing about the place ? 
What would the shopkeeper know about M. 
Bertrand, my landlord of half a century ago; 
or his first wife, to whose funeral 1 went ; or his 
second, to whose bridal I was bidden ? 

I ought next to have gone to the hospital 
La Piti^, where I passed much of my time 
during those two years. But the people there 
would not know me, and my old master's name, 
Louis, is but a dim legend in the wards where 
he used to teach his faithful band of almost 



PARIS.- ST. ETIENNE DU MONT. 251 

worshipping students. Besides, I have not been 
among hospital beds for many a year, and my 
sensibilities are almost as impressible as they 
were before daily habit had rendered them com- 
paratively callous. 

How strange it is to look down on one's ven- 
erated teachers, after climbing with the world's 
progress half a century above the level where we 
left them ! The stethoscope was almost a nov- 
elty in those days. The microscope was never 
mentioned by any clinical instructor I listened 
to while a medical student. Nous avons change 
tout cela is true of every generation in medi- 
cine, — changed oftentimes by improvement, 
sometimes by fashion or the pendulum-swing 
from one extreme to another. 

On my way back from the hospital I used 
to stop at the beautiful little church St. Etienne 
du Mont, and that was one of the first places to 
which I drove after looking at my student-quar- 
ters. All was just as of old. The tapers were 
burning about the tomb of St. Genevieve. 
Samson, with the jawbone of the ass, still 
crouched and sweated, or looked as if he did, 
under the weight of the pulpit. One might 



252 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

question how well the preacher in the pulpit 
liked the suggestion of the figure beneath it. 
The sculptured screen and gallery, the exquisite 
spiral stairways, the carved figures about the 
organ, the tablets on the walls, — one in partic- 
ular relating the fall of two young girls from 
the gallery, and their miraculous protection from 
injury, — all these images found their counter- 
part in my memory. I did not remember how 
very beautiful is the stained glass in the char- 
7iiers, which must not be overlooked by vis- 
itors. 

It is not far from St. Etienne du Mont to the 
Pantheon. I cannot say that there is any odor 
of sanctity about this great temple, which has 
been consecrated, if I remember correctly, and, 
I will not say desecrated, but secularized from 
time to time, according to the party which hap- 
pened to be uppermost. I confess that I did 
not think of it chiefly as a sacred edifice, or as 
the resting-place, more or less secure, of the 
''^grands Aomwies " to whom it is dedicated. I 
was thinking much more of Foucault's grand 
experiment, one of the most sublime visible 
demonstrations of a great physical fact in the 



PARTS. — THE PANTHEON. 253 

records of science. The reader may not happen 
to remember it, and will like, perhaps, to be 
reminded of it. Foucault took advantage of 
the height of the dome, nearly three hundred 
feet, and had a heavy weight suspended by a 
wire from its loftiest point, forming an immense 
pendulum, — the longest, I suppose, ever con- 
structed. Now a moving body tends to keep its 
original plane of movement, and so the great 
pendulum, being set swinging north and south, 
tended to keep on in the same direction. But 
the earth was moving under it, and as it rolled 
from west to east the plane running through the 
north and south poles was every instant chang- 
ing. Thus the pendulum appeared to change 
its direction, and its deviation was shown on a 
graduated arc, or by the marks it left in a little 
heap of sand which it touched as it swung. This 
experiment on the great scale has since been 
repeated on the small scale by the aid of other 
contrivances. 

My thoughts wandered back, naturally enough, 
to Galileo in the Cathedral at Pisa. It was the 
swinging of the suspended lamp in that edifice 
which set his mind workin^: on the laws which 



25tt OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

govern the action of the pendnhim. While he 
was meditating on this physical problem, the 
priest may have been holding forth on the dan- 
gers of meddling with matters settled by Holy 
Church, who stood ready to enforce her edicts 
by the logic of the rack and the fagot. An 
inference from the above remarks is that what 
one brings from a church depends very much on 
what he carries into it. 

The next place to visit could be no other than 
the Cafe Procope. This famous resort is the 
most ancient and the most celebrated of all the 
Parisian cafes. Voltaire, the poet J. B. Rous- 
seau, Marmontel, Sainte Foix, Saurin, were 
among its frequenters in the eighteenth century. 
It stands in the Rue des Fossds-Saint-Germain, 
now Rue de I'Ancienne Comedie. Several 
American students, Bostonians and Philadelphi- 
ans, myself among the number, used to break- 
fast at this cafd every morning. I have no 
doubt that I met various celebrities there, but I 
recall only one name which is likely to be known 
to most or many of my readers. A delicate- 
looking man, seated at one of the tables, was 
pointed out to me as Jouffroy. If I had known 



PARIS.— Til K CAFIiJ PRO COPE. 255 

as much about hiiu as I learned afterwards, I 
slioidd have looked at him with more interest. 
He had one of those imaginative natures, tinged 
by constitutional melancholy and saddened by 
ill health, which belong to a certain class of 
poets and sentimental writers, of which Pascal 
is a good example, and Cowper another. The 
world nuist have seemed very cruel to him. I 
remember that when he was a candidate for the 
Assembly, one of the popular cries, as reported 
by the newspapers of the time, was A has le 
poitrinaire ! Plis malady soon laid liim low 
enough, for he died in 1842, at the age of forty- 
six. I must have been very much taken up with 
my medical studies to have neglected my oppor- 
tunity of seeing the great statesmen, authors, 
artists, orators, and men of science outside of 
the medical profession. Poisson, Arago, and 
Jouifroy are all I can distinctly recall, among 
the Frenchmen of eminence whom I had all 
around me. 

The Caf^ Procope has been much altered and 
improved, and bears an inscription telling the 
date of its establishment, which was in the year 
1689. I entered the caf6, which was nearly or 



256 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

quite empty, the usual breakfast hour being 
past. 

Gargon ! Une tasse de cafS. 

If there is a river of mneme as a counterpart 
of the river letJie^ my cup of coffee must have 
got its water from that stream of memory. If I 
could borrow that eloquence of Jouffroy which 
made his hearers turn pale, I might bring up 
before my readers a long array of pallid ghosts, 
whom these walls knew well in their earthly 
habiliments. Only a single one of those I met 
here still survives. The rest are mostly well- 
nigh forgotten by all but a few friends, or re- 
membered chiefly in their children and grand- 
children. 

" How much ? " I said to the gar^on in his 
native tongue, or what I supposed to be that 
language. " Cinq sous^^^ was his answer. By 
the laws of sentiment, I ought to have made 
the ignoble sum five francs, at least. But if I 
had done so, the waiter would undoubtedly have 
thought that I had just come from Charenton. 
Besides, why should I violate the simple habits 
and traditions of the place, where generation 
after generation of poor students and threadbare 



PARIS. — THE CAF]^ PROCOPE. 257 

Bolieiniaiis had taken their morning coffee and 
po(;keted tlieir two lumps of sugar? It was 
with a feeling of virile sanity and Roman self- 
conquest that I paid my five sous, with the small 
additional fraction which I supposed the waiter 
to expect, and no more. 

So I passed for the last time over the thresh- 
old of the Caf6 Procope, where Voltaire had 
matured his plays and Piron sharpened his epi- 
grams ; where Jouffroy had battled with his 
doubts and fears ; where, since their time, — 
since my days of Parisian life, — the terrible 
storming youth, afterwards rc^nowned as Ldon 
Michel Gambetta, had startled the quiet guests 
with his noisy eloquence, till the old Tiahitues 
spilled their coffee, and the red-capped students 
said to each other, " II ira loin, ce fjall- 
lard-ldf' 

But whjit to me were these shadowy figures 
by the side of the group of my early friends and 
companions, that came up before me in all the 
freshness of their young manhood ? The mem- 
ory of tliem recalls my own youthful days, and 
I need not go to Florida to bathe in the foun- 
tain of Ponce de Leon. 



258 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I have sometimes thought that I love so well 
the accidents of this temporary terrestrial resi- 
dence, its endeared localities, its precious affec- 
tions, its pleasing variety of occupation, its al- 
ternations of excited and gratified curiosity, and 
whatever else comes nearest to the longings of 
the natural man, that I might be wickedly 
homesick in a far-off spiritual realm where such 
toys are done with. But there is a j)retty lesson 
which I have often meditated, taught, not this 
time by the lilies of the field, but by the fruits 
of the garden. When, in the June honeymoon 
of the seasons, the strawberry shows itself among 
the bridal gifts, many of us exclaim for the hun- 
dredth time with Dr. Boteler, " Doubtless God 
could have made a better berry, but doubtless 
God never did." Nature, who is God's hand- 
maid, does not attempt a rival berry. But by 
and by a little woolly knob, which looked and 
saw with wonder the strawberry reddening, and 
perceived the fragrance it diffused all around, 
begins to fill out, and grow soft and pulpy and 
sweet ; and at last a glow comes to its cheek, 
and we say the peach is ripening. When Na- 
ture has done with it, and delivers it to us in 



PARTS. — GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE. 259 

its perfection, we forget all tho lesser fruits 
which have gone before it. If the flavor of 
the peach and the fragrance of the rose are 
not found in some fruit and flower which grow 
by the side of the river of life, an earth-born 
spirit might be forgiven for missing them. The 
strawberry and the pink are very delightful, but 
we could be happy without them. 

So, too, we may hope that when the fruits of 
our brief early season of three or four score 
years have given us all they can impart for our 
happiness ; when '' the love of little maids and 
berries," and all other earthly prettinesses, shall 
" soar and sing," as Mr. Emerson sweetly re- 
minds us that they all must, we may hope that 
the abiding felicities of our later life-season may 
far more than compensate us for all that have 
taken their flight. 

I looked forward with the greatest interest to 
revisiting the Gallery of the Louvre, accompanied 
by my long-treasured recollections. I retained 
a vivid remembrance of many pictures, which 
had been kept bright by seeing great numbers 
of reproductions of them in photographs and en- 
gravings. 



260 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

The first thing which struck me was that the 
pictures had been rearranged in such a way that 
I could find nothing in the place where I looked 
for it. But when I found them, they greeted 
me, so 1 fancied, like old acquaintances. The 
meek-looking " Belle Jardiniere " was as lamb- 
like as ever ; the pearly nymph of Correggio in- 
vited the stranger's eye as frankly as of old ; 
Titian's young man with the glove was the calm, 
self-contained gentleman I used to admire ; the 
splashy Rubenses, the pallid Guidos, the sunlit 
Claudes, the shadowy Poussins, the moonlit 
Girardets, Gericault's terrible shipwreck of the 
Medusa, the exquisite home pictures of Gerard 
Douw and Terburg, — all these and many more 
have always been on exhibition in my ideal gal- 
lery, and I only mention them as the first that 
happen to suggest themselves. 

The Museum of the Hotel Cluny is a curious 
receptacle of antiquities, many of which I looked 
at with interest ; but they made no lasting im- 
pression, and have gone into the lumber-room of 
memory, from which accident may, from time to 
time, drag out some few of them. 

After the poor unsatisfactory towers of West- 



PARIS. — M. PASTEUR. 261 

minster Abbey, the two massive, noble, truly 
majestic towers of Notre Dame strike the travel- 
ler as a crushing contrast. It is not hard to see 
that one of these grand towers is somewhat 
larger than the other, but the difference does not 
interfere with the effect of the imposing front of 
the cathedral. 

I was much pleased to find that I could have 
entrance to the Sainte Chapelle, which was used, 
at the time of my earlier visit, as a storehouse 
of judicial archives, of which there was a vast 
accumulation. 

With the exception of my call at the office of 
the American Legation, I made but a single 
visit to any person in Paris. That person was 
M. Pasteur. I might have carried a letter to 
him, for my friend Mrs. Priestley is well ac- 
quainted with him, but I had not thought of ask- 
ing for one. So I presented myself at his head- 
quarters, and was admitted into a courtyard, 
where a multitude of his patients were gathered. 
They were of various ages and of many different 
nationalities, every one of them with the vague 
terror hanging over him or her. Yet the young 
people seemed to be cheerful enough, and very 



262 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

much like scholars out of school. I sent my 
card in to M. Pasteur, who was busily engaged 
in writing, with his clerks or students about 
him, and presently he came out and greeted me. 
I told him I was an American physician, who 
wished to look in his face and take his hand, — 
nothing more. I looked in his face, which was 
that of a thoughtful, hard-worked student, a lit- 
tle past the grand climacteric, — he was born in 
1822. I took his hand, which has performed 
some of the most delicate and daring experi- 
ments ever ventured upon, with results of almost 
incalculable benefit to human industries, and the 
promise of triumph in the treatment of human 
disease which prophecy would not have dared to 
anticipate. I will not say that I have a full be- 
lief that hydrophobia, — in some respects the 
most terrible of all diseases, — is to be extirpated 
or rendered tractable by his method of treat- 
ment. But of his inventive originality, his un- 
conquerable perseverance, his devotion to the 
good of mankind, there can be no question. I 
look upon him as one of the greatest experi- 
menters that ever lived, one of the truest bene- 
factors of his race ; and if I made my due obei- 



PARIS. 263 

sance before princes, I felt far more humble in 
the presence of this great explorer, to whom 
the God of Nature has entrusted some of her 
most precious secrets. 

There used to be, — I can hardly think it still 
exists, — a class of persons who prided themselves 
on their disbelief in the reality of any such dis- 
tinct disease as hydrophobia. I never thought 
it worth while to argue with them, for I have 
noticed that this disbelief is only a special mani- 
festation of a particular habit of mind. Its ad- 
vocates will be found, I think, most frequently 
among "the long-haired men and the short- 
haired women." Many of them dispute the ef- 
ficacy of vaccination. Some are disciples of 
Hahnemann, some have full faith in the mind- 
cure, some attend the seances where flowers 
(bought from the nearest florist) are material- 
ized, and some invest their money in Mrs. Howe's 
Bank of Benevolence. Their tendency is to re- 
ject the truth which is generally accepted, and to 
accept the improbable ; if the impossible offers 
itself, they deny the existence of the impossible. 
Argument with this class of minds is a lever 
without a fulcrum. 



264 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I was glad to leave that company of patients, 
still uncertain of their fate, — hoping, yet pur- 
sued by their terror: peasants bitten by mad 
wolves in Siberia ; women snapped at by their 
sulking lap-dogs in London ; children from over 
the water who had been turned upon by the irri- 
table Skye terrier ; innocent victims torn by ill- 
conditioned curs at the doors of the friends they 
were meaning to visit, — all haunted by the 
same ghastly fear, all starting from sleep in the 
same nightmare. 

If canine rabies is a fearful subject to contem- 
plate, there is a sadder and deeper significance 
in rabies Jiumana ; in that awful madness of the 
human race which is marked by a thirst for 
blood and a rage for destruction. The remem- 
brance of such a distemper which has attacked 
mankind, especially mankind of the Parisian 
sub-species, came over me very strongly when 
I first revisited the Place Yendome. I should 
have supposed that the last object upon which 
Parisians would, in their wildest frenzy, have 
laid violent hands would have been the column 
with the figure of Napoleon at its summit. We 
all know what happened in 1871. An artist, 



PARIS. 265 

we should have thought, would be the last per- 
son to lead the iconoclasts in such an outrage. 
But M. Courbet has attained an immortality like 
that of Erostratus by the part he took in pulling 
down the column. It was restored in 1874. I 
do not question that the work of restoration was 
well done, but my eyes insisted on finding a 
fault in some of its lines which was probably in 
their own refracting media. Fifty years before 
an artist helped to overthrow the monument to 
the Emperor, a poet had apostrophized him in 
the bitterest satire since the days of Juvenal : — 

* * Encor Napoleon ! encor sa grande image I 
Ah ! que ce rude et dur guerrier 
Nous a cout^ de sang et de pleurs et d'outrage 
Pour quelques rameaux de laurier ! 

" Eh bien ! dans tous ces jours d'abaissement, de peine, 
Pour tous ces outrages sans nom, 
Je n'ai jamais charge' qu'un etre de ma haine, . . . 
Sois maudit, O Napoleon ! " 

After looking at the column of the Place Ven- 
d6me and recalling these lines of Barbier, I was 
ready for a visit to the tomb of Napoleon. The 
poet's curse had helped me to explain the paint- 
er's frenzy against the bronze record of his 



266 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

achievements and the image at its summit. But 
I forijot them both as I stood under the dome 
of the Invalides, and looked upon the massive 
receptacle which holds the dust of the imperial 
exile. Two things, at least, Napoleon accom- 
plished : he opened the way for ability of all 
kinds, and he dealt the death-blow to the divine 
right of kings and all the abuses which clung to 
that superstition. If I brought nothing else 
away from my visit to his mausoleum, I left it 
impressed with what a man can be when fully 
equipped by nature, and placed in circumstances 
where his forces can have full play. " How in- 
finite in faculty ! ... in apprehension how like, 
a god ! " Such were my reflections ; very much, 
I suppose, like those of the average visitor, and 
too obviously having nothing to require contra- 
diction or comment. 

Paris as seen by the morning sun of three or 
four and twenty and Paris in the twilight of the 
superfluous decade cannot be expected to look 
exactly alike. I well remember my first break- 
fast at a Parisian cafe in the spring of 1833. 
It was in the Place de la Bourse, on a beautiful 
sunshiny morning. The coffee was nectar, the 



PARIS. 267 

flute was ambrosia, the brioche was more than 
good enough for the Olympians. Such an ex- 
perience could not repeat itself fifty years later. 
The first restaurant at which we dined was in 
the Palais Royal. The place was hot enough to 
cook an Q^g. Nothing was very excellent nor 
very bad ; the wine was not so good as they gave 
us at our hotel in London ; the enchanter had 
not waved his wand over our repast, as he did 
over my earlier one in the Place de la Bourse, 
and I had not the slightest desire to pay the 
gar^on thrice his fee on the score of cherished 
associations. We dined at our hotel on some 
days, at different restaurants on others. One 
day we dined, and dined well, at the old Caf<^ 
Anglais, famous in my earlier times for its 
turbot. Another day we took our dinner at a 
very celebrated restaurant on the boulevard. 
One sauce which was served us was a gastro- 
nomic symphony, the harmonies of which were 
new to me and pleasing. But I remember little 
else of sujjerior excellence. The garcon pock- 
eted the franc I gave him with the air of hav- 
ing expected a napoleon. 

Into the mysteries of a lady's shopping in 



268 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

Paris I would not venture to inquire. But 

A and I strolled together through the Palais 

Royal in the evening, and amused ourselves by 
staring at the glittering windows without being 
severely tempted. Bond Street had exhausted 
our susceptibility to the shop-window seduction, 
and the napoleons did not burn in the pockets 
where the sovereigns had had time to cool. 

Nothing looked more nearly the same as of 
old than the bridges. The Pont Neuf did not 
seem to me altered, though we had read in the 
papers that it was in ruins or seriously injured 
in consequence of a great flood. The statues 
had been removed from the Pont Royal, one or 
two new bridges had been built, but all was nat- 
ural enough, and I was tempted to look for the 
old woman, at the end of the Pont des Arts, 
who used to sell me a bunch of violets, for two 
or three sous, — such as would cost me a quarter 
of a dollar in Boston. I did not see the three 
objects which a popular saying alleges are al- 
ways to be met on the Pont Neuf : a priest, a 
soldier, and a white horse. 

The weather was hot ; we were tired, and 
did not care to go to the theatres, if any of 



PARIS.— THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. 269 

them were open. The pleasantest hours were 
those of our afternoon drive in the Champs 
Elys^es and the Bois de Boulogne, — or " the 
Boulogne Woods," as our American tailor's wife 
of the old time called the favorite place for 
driving. In passing the Place de la Concorde, 
two objects in especial attracted my attention, — 
the obelisk, which was lying, when I left it, in 
the great boat which brought it from the Nile, 
and the statue of Strasbourg, all covered with 
wreaths and flags. How like children these 
Parisians do act ; crying " A Berlin, ^ Berlin ! " 
and when Berlin comes to Paris, and Stras- 
bourg goes back to her old proprietors, instead 
of taking it quietly, making all this parade of 
patriotic symbols, the disj^lay of which belongs 
to victory rather than to defeat ! 

I was surprised to find the trees in the Bois 
de Boulogne so well grown : I had an idea that 
they had been largely sacrificed in the time of 
the siege. Among the objects which deserve 
special mention are the shrieking parrots and 
other birds and the yelping dogs in the grounds 
of the Society of Acclimatization, — out of the 
range of which the visitor will be glad to get as 



270 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

soon as possible. A fountain visited by newly 
married couples and their friends, with a res- 
taurant near by, where the bridal party drink 
the health of the newly married pair, was an ob- 
ject of curiosity. An unsteadiness of gait was 
obvious in some of the feasters. At one point 
in the middle of the road a maenad was flinging 
her arms about and shrieking as if she were just 
escaped from a madhouse. But the drive in 
the Bois was what made Paris tolerable. There 
were few fine equipages, and few distinguished- 
looking people in the carriages, but there were 
quiet groups by the wayside, seeming happy 
enough ; and now and then a pretty face or a 
wonderful bonnet gave variety to the somewhat 
bourgeois character of the procession of fiacres. 
I suppose I ought to form no opinion at all 
about the aspect of Paris, any more than I 
should of an oyster in a month without an r in 
it. We were neither of us in the best mood for 
sight-seeing, and Paris was not sitting up for 
company ; in fact, she was " not at home." Re- 
membering all this, I must say that the whole 
appearance of the city was dull and dreary. 
London out of season seemed still full of life ; 



PARIS. 271 

Paris out of season looked vacuous and torpid. 
The recollection of the sorrow, the humiliation, 
the shame, and the agony she had passed 
through since I left her picking her way on the 
arm of the Citizen King, with his old riflard 
over her, rose before me sadly, ominously, as I 
looked upon the high board fence which sur- 
rounded the ruins of the Tuileries. I can un- 
derstand th(i impulse which led the red caps to 
make a wreck of this grand old historical build- 
ing. " Pull down the nest," they said, " and 
the birds will not come back." But I shudder 
when I think what " the red fool-fury of the 
Seine " has done and is believed capable of do- 
ing. I think nothing has so profoundly im- 
pressed me as the story of the precautions taken 
to preserve the Venus of Milo from the brutal 
hands of the mob. A little more violent access 
of fury, a little more fiery declamation, a few 
more bottles of vin hleu^ and the Gallery of the 
Louvre, with all its treasures of art, compared 
with which the crown jewels just sold are 
but pretty pebbles, the market price of which 
fairly enough expresses their value, — much 
more, rather, than their true value, — that noble 



272 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

gallery, with all its masterpieces from the hands 
of Greek sculptors and Italian painters, would 
have been changed in a single night into a heap of 
blackened stones and a pile of smoking cinders. 
I love to think that now that the people have, 
or at least think they have, the power in their 
own hands, they will outgrow this form of mad- 
ness, which is almost entitled to the name of a 
Parisian endemic. Everything looked peaceable 
and stupid enough during the week I passed in 
Paris. But among all the fossils which Cuvier 
found in the Parisian basin, nothing was more 
monstrous than the 2^oissa7'des of the old Revo- 
lution, or the petroleuses of the recent Com- 
mune, and I fear that the breed is not extinct. 
An American comes to like Paris as warmly as 
he comes to love England, after living in it long 
enough to become accustomed to its ways, and 
I, like the rest of my countrymen who remem- 
ber that France was our friend in the hour of 
need, who remember all the privileges and en- 
joyments she has freely offered us, who feel that 
as a sister republic her destinies are of the 
deepest interest to us, can have no other wish 
than for her continued safety, order, and pros- 
perity. 



LONDON. 273 

We returned to London on the 13th of Au- 
gust by the same route we had followed in go- 
ing from London to Paris. Our passage was 
rough, as compared to the former one, and some 
of the passengers were seasick. We were both 
fortunate enough to escape that trial of comfort 
and self-respect. 

I can hardly separate the story of the follow- 
ing week from that of the one before we went 
to Paris. We did a little more shopping and 
saw a few more sights. I hope that no reader 
of mine would suppose that I would leave Lon- 
don without seeing Madame Tussaud's exhibi- 
tion. Our afternoon drives made us familiar 
with many objects which I always looked upon 
with pleasure. There was the obelisk, brought 
from Egypt at the expense of a distinguished 
and successful medical practitioner, Sir Erasmus 
Wilson, the eminent dermatologist and author 
of a manual of anatomy which for many years 
was my favorite text-book. There was " The 
Monument," which characterizes itself by having 
no prefix to its generic name. I enjoyed look- 
ing at and driving round it, and thinking over 
Pepys's lively account of the Great Fire, and 



274 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

speculating as to where Pudding Lane and Pie 
Corner stood, and recalling Pope's lines which 
I used to read at school, wondering what was 
the meaning of the second one : — 

" Wliere London's column, pointing' to the skies 
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies. ' ' 

The week passed away rapidly enough, and 
we made ready for our departure. It was no 
easy matter to get a passage home, but we had 
at last settled it that we would return in the 
same vessel in which we had at first engaged 
our passage to Liverpool, the Catalonia. But 
we were fortunate enough to have found an 
active and efficient friend in our townsman, Mr. 
Montgomery Sears, who procured staterooms 
for us in a much swifter vessel, to sail on the 
21st for New York, the Aurania. 

Our last visitor in London was the faithful 
friend who had been the first to welcome us, 
Lady Haroourt, in whose kind attentions I felt 
the warmth of my old friendship with her ad- 
mired and honored father and her greatly be- 
loved mother. I had recently visited their place 
of rest in the Kensal Green Cemetery, recalling 
with tenderest emotions the many years in which 
I had enjoyed their companionship. 



LIVERPOOL. 275 

On the 19th of August we left London for 
Liverpool, and on our arrival took lodgings at 
the Adelphi Hotel. 

The kindness with which I had been wel- 
comed, when I first arrived at Liverpool, had 
left a deep impression upon my mind. It 
seemed very ungrateful to leave that noble city, 
which had met me in some of its most esteemed 
representatives with a warm grasp of the hand 
even before my foot had touched English soil, 
without staying to thank my new friends, who 
would have it that they were old friends. But 
I was entirely unfit for enjoying any company 
when I landed. I took care, therefore, to allow 
sufficient time in Liverpool, before sailing for 
home, to meet such friends, old and recent, as 
cared to make or renew acquaintance with me. 
In the afternoon of the 20th we held a recep- 
tion, at which a hundred visitors, more or 
less, presented themselves, and we had a very 
sociable hour or two together. The Vice-Con- 
sul, Mr. Sewall, in the enforced absence of his 
principal, Mr. Russell, paid us every attention, 
and was very agreeable. In the evening I 
was entertained at a great banquet given by 



276 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

the Philomathean Society. This flourishing in- 
stitution enrolls among its members a large 
proportion of the most cultivated and intelligent 
gentlemen of Liverpool. I enjoyed the meeting 
very highly, listened to pleasant things which 
were said about myself, and answered in the un- 
premeditated words which came to my lips and 
were cordially received. I could have wished to 
see more of Liverpool, but I found time only to 
visit the great exhibition, then open. The one 
class of objects which captivated my attention 
was the magnificent series of models of steam- 
boats and other vessels. I did not look upon 
them with the eye of an expert, but the great 
number and variety of these beautiful miniature 
ships and boats excited my admiration. 

On the 21st of August we went on board the 
Aurania. Everything was done to make us 
comfortable. Many old acquaintances, friends, 
and family connections were our fellow-passen- 
gers. As for myself, I passed through the same 
trying experiences as those which I have re- 
corded as characterizing my outward passage. 
Our greatest trouble during the passage was 
from fog. The frequency of collisions, of late 



THE HOMEWARD PASSAGE. 277 

years, tends to make everybody nervous when 
they hear the fog-whistle shrieking. This sound 
and the sight of the boats are not good for 
timid people. Fortunately, no one was particu- 
larly excitable, or if so, no one betrayed any 
special uneasiness. 

On the evening of the 27th we had an enter- 
tainment, in which Miss Kellogg sang and I 
read several poems. A very pretty sum was 
realized for some charity, — I forget what, — 
and the affair was voted highly successful. The 
next day, the 28th, we were creeping towards 
our harbor through one of those dense fogs 
which are more dangerous than the old rocks of 
the sirens, or Scylla and Charybdis, or the much- 
lied-about maelstrom. 

On Sunday, the 29th of August, my birthday, 
we arrived in New York. In these days of 
birthday-books our chronology is not a matter 
of secret history, in case we have been much 
before the public. I found a great cake had 
been made ready for me, in which the number 
of my summers was represented by a ring of 
raisins which made me feel like Methuselah. A 
beautiful bouquet which had been miraculously 



278 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

preserved for the occasion was for the first time 
displayed. It came from Dr. Beach, of Boston, 
via London. Such is the story, and I can only 
suppose that the sweet little cherub who sits up 
aloft had taken special charge of it, or it would 
have long ago withered. 

We slept at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which 
we found fresh, sweet, bright, — it must have 
been recently rejuvenated, I thought. The next 
day we took the train for New Haven, Spring- 
field, and Boston, and that night slept in our own 
beds, thankful to find ourselves safe at home 
after our summer excursion, whicli had brought 
us so many experiences delightful to remember, 
so many friendships which have made life better 
worth living. 

In the following section I shall give some of 
the general impressions which this excursion 
has left in my memory, and a few suggestions 
derived from them. 



VIIL 

My reader was fairly forewarned that this 
narrative was to be more like a chapter of auto- 
biography than the record of a tourist. In the 
language of philosophy, it is written from a sub- 
jective, not an objective, point of view. It is 
not exactly a " Sentimental Journey," though 
there are warm passages here and there which 
end with notes of admiration. I remind myself 
now and then of certain other travellers : of 
Benjamin of Tudela, going from the hospitali- 
ties of one son of Abraham to another ; of John 
Buncle, finding the loveliest of women under 
every roof that sheltered him ; sometimes, per- 
haps, of that tipsy rhymester whose record of 
his good and bad fortunes at the hands of land- 
lords and landladies is enlivened by an occa- 
sional touch of humor, which makes it palatable 
to coarse literary feeders. But in truth these 
papers have many of the characteristics of pii- 
vate letters written home to friends. They are 



280 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

written for friends, rather than for a public 
which cares nothing about the writer. I knew 
that there were many such whom it would please 
to know where the writer went, whom he saw 
and what he saw, and how he was impressed by 
persons and things. 

If I were planning to make a tour of the 
United Kingdom, and could command the ser- 
vice of all the wise men I count or have counted 
among my friends, I would go with such a re- 
tinue summoned from the ranks of the living 
and the dead as no prince ever carried with him. 
I would ask Mr. Lowell to go with me among 
scholars, where I could be a listener ; Mr. Nor- 
ton to visit the cathedrals with me ; Professor 
Gray to be my botanical oracle ; Professor Ag- 
assiz to be always ready to answer questions 
about the geological strata and their fossils ; Dr. 
Jeifries Wyman to point out and interpret the 
common objects which present themselves to a 
sharp-eyed observer ; and Mr. Boyd Dawkins to 
pilot me among the caves and cairns. Then I 
should want a better pair of eyes and a better 
pair of ears, and, while I was reorganizing, per- 
haps a quicker apprehension and a more retentive 



WHY THIS RECORD IS PRINTED. 281 

memory; in short, a new outfit, bodily and 
mental. But Nature does not care to mend old 
shoes ; she prefers a new pair, and a young- 
person to stand in them. 

What a great book one could make, with such 
aids, and how many would fling it down, and 
take up anything in preference, provided only 
that it were short enough ; even this slight rec- 
ord, for want of something shorter ! 

Not only did I feel sure that many friends 
would like to read our itinerary, but another 
motive prompted me to tell the simple story of 
our travels. I could not receive such kindness, 
so great evidences of friendly regard, without a 
strong desire, amounting to a positive necessity, 
for the expression of my grateful sense of all 
that had been done for us. Individually, I felt 
it, of course, as a most pleasing experience. 
But I believed it to have a more important sig- 
nificance as an illustration of the cordial feel- 
ing existing between England and America. I 
know that many of my countrymen felt the at- 
tentions paid to me as if they themselves shared 
them with me. I have lived through many 
strata of feeling in America towards England. 



282 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

My parents, full-blooded Americans, were both 
born subjects of King George III. Both 
learned in their early years to look upon Britons 
as the enemies of their country. A good deal 
of the old hostility lingered through my boyhood, 
and this was largely intensified by the war of 
1812. After nearly half a century this feeling 
had in great measure subsided, when the War 
of Secession called forth expressions of sym- 
pathy with the slaveholding States which sur- 
prised, shocked, and deeply wounded the lovers 
of liberty and of England in the Northern 
States. A new generation is outgrowing that 
alienation. More and more the older and 
younger nations are getting to be proud and 
really fond of each other. There is no shorter 
road to a mother's heart than to speak plea- 
santly to her child, and caress it, and call it 
pretty names. No matter whether the child is 
something remarkable or not, it is her child, and 
that is enough. It may be made too much of, 
but that is not its mother's fault. If I could 
believe that every attention paid me was due 
simply to my being an American, I should feel 
honored and happy in being one of the hum- 



ZO.ST OPPORTUNITIES. 283 

bier media through which the good -will of a 
great and generous country reached the heart of 
a far off people not always in friendly relations 
with her. 

I have named many of the friends who did 
everything to make our stay in England and 
Scotland agreeable. The unforeseen shortening 
of my visit must account for many disappoint- 
ments to myself, and some, it may be, to others. 

First in the list of lost opportunities was that 
of making my bow to the Queen. I had the 
honor of receiving a card with the invitation to 
meet Her Majesty at a garden-party, but we 
were travelling when it was sent, and it arrived 
too late. 

I was very sorry not to meet Mr. Kuskin, to 
whom Mr. Norton had given me a note of intro- 
duction. At the time when we were hoping to 
see him it was thought that he was too ill to re- 
ceive visitors, but he has since written me that 
he regretted we did not carry out our intention. 
I lamented my being too late to see once more 
two gentlemen from whom I should have been 
sure of a kind welcome, — Lord Houghton and 
Dean Stanley, both of whom I had met in Bos- 



284 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

ton. Even if I had stayed out the whole time I 
had intended to remain abroad, I should un- 
doubtedly have failed to see many persons and 
many places that I must always feel sorry for 
having missed. But as it is, I will not try to 
count all that I lost ; let me rather be thankful 
that I met so many friends whom it was a plea- 
sure to know personally, and saw so much that 
it is a pleasure to remember. 

I find that many of the places I most wish to 
see are those associated with the memory of 
some individual, generally one of the generations 
more or less in advance of my own. One of the 
first places I should go to, in a leisurely tour, 
would be Selborne. Gilbert White was not a 
poet, neither was he a great systematic naturalist. 
But he used his eyes on the world about him ; 
he found occupation and happiness in his daily 
walks, and won as large a measure of immortal- 
ity within the confines of his little village as he 
could have gained rn exploring the sources of 
the Nile. I should make a solemn pilgrimage to 
the little town of Eyam, in Derbyshire, where 
the Reverend Mr. Mompesson, the hero of the 
plague of 1665, and his wife, its heroine and its 



UN VI SITED SHRINES. 285 

victim, lie buried. I should like to follow the 
traces of Cowper at Olney and of Bunyan at 
Elstow. I found an intense interest in the 
Reverend Mr. Alger's account of his visit to 
the Vale of Llangollen, where Lady Eleanor 
Butler and Miss Ponsonby passed their peaceful 
days in long, uninterrupted friendship. Of 
course the haunts of Burns, the home of Scott, 
the whole region made sacred by Wordsworth 
and the group to which he belongs would be so 
many shrines to which I should make pilgrim- 



I own, also, to having something of the melo- 
dramatic taste so notable in Victor Hugo. I 
admired the noble facade of Wells cathedral 
and the grand old episcopal palace, but I begged 
the bishop to show me the place where his pre- 
decessor. Bishop Kidder and his wife, were killed 
by the falling chimney in the "Great Storm." — 
I wanted to go to Devizes, and see the monu- 
ment in the market-place, where Ruth Pierce was 
struck dead with a lie in her mouth, — about all 
which I had read in early boyhood. I contented 
myself with a photograph of it which my friend, 
Mr. Willett, went to Devizes and bought for me. 



286 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

There are twenty different Englands, every 
one of which it would be a delight to visit, and 
I should hardly know with which of them to 
begin. 

The few remarks I have to make on what I 
saw and heard have nothing beyond the value 
of first impressions ; but as I have already said, 
if these are simply given, without pretending to 
be anything more, they are not worthless. At 
least they can do little harm, and may some- 
times amuse a reader whom they fail to in- 
struct. But we must all beware of hasty con- 
clusions. If a foreigner of limited intellio^ence 
were whirled through England on the railways, 
he would naturally come to the conclusion that 
the chief product of that country is mustard., 
and that its most celebrated people are Mr. 
Keen and Mr. Colman, whose great advertising 
boards, yellow letters on a black ground, and 
black letters on a yellow ground, stare the trav- 
eller in the face at every station. 

Of the climate, as I knew it in May and the 
summer months, I will only say that if I had any 
illusions about May and June in England, my 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 287 

fireplace would have been ample evidence that I 
was entirely disenchanted. The Derby day, the 
2Gth of May, was most chilly and uncomfortable ; 
at the garden-party at Kensington Palace, on the 
4th of June, it was cold enough to make hot 
drinks and warm wraps a comfort, if not a ne- 
cessity. I was thankful to have passed through 
these two ordeals without ill consequences. 
Drizzly, or damp, or cold, cloudy days were the 
rule rather than the exception, while we wore in 
London. We had some few hot days, espe- 
cially at Stratford, in the early part of July. In 
London an umbrella is as often carried as a 
cane ; in Paris " un homme a pdrapluie " is, or 
used to be, supposed to carry that useful article 
because he does not keep and cannot hire a car- 
riage of some sort. Pie may therefore be safely 
considered a person, and not a personage. 

The soil of England does not seem to be worn 
out, to judge by the wonderful verdure and the 
luxuriance of vegetation. It contains a great 
museum of geological specimens, and a series of 
historical strata which are among the most in- 
structive of human records. I do not pretend to 
much knowledge of geology. The most interest- 



288 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

ing geological objects in our New England that 
I can think of are the great boulders and the 
scratched and smoothed surface of the rocks; 
the fossil footprints in the valley of the Connec- 
ticut ; the trilobites found at Quincy. But the 
readers of Hugh Miller remember what a vari- 
ety of fossils he found in the stratified rocks 
of his little island, and the museums are full 
of just such objects. When it comes to un- 
derground historical relics, the poverty of New 
England as compared with the wealth of Old 
England is very striking. Stratum after stratum 
carries the explorer through the relics of succes- 
sive invaders. After passing through the char- 
acteristic traces of different peoples, he comes 
upon a Koman pavement, and below this the 
weapons and ornaments of a tribe of ancient 
Britons. One cannot strike a spade into the 
earth, in Great Britain, without a fair chance of 
some surprise in the form of a Saxon coin, or a 
Celtic implement, or a Eoman fibula. Nobody 
expects any such pleasing surprise in a New 
England field. One must be content with an In- 
dian arrowhead or two, now and then a pestle 
and mortar, or a stone pipe. A top dressing of 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 289 

antiquity is all he can look for. The soil is not 
humanized enough to be interesting ; whereas in 
England so much of it has been trodden by hu- 
man feet, built on in the form of human habita- 
tions, nay, has been itself a part of preceding 
generations of human beings, that it is in a kind 
of dumb sympathy with those who tread its turf. 
Perhaps it is not literally true that 

One half her soil has walked the rest 
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages ; 

but so many of all these lie within it that the 
whole mother island is a campo santo to all who 
can claim the same blood as that which runs in 
the veins of her unweaned children. 

The flora and fauna of a country, as seen 
from railroad trains and carriages, are not likely 
to be very accurately or exhaustively studied. I 
spoke of the trees I noticed between Chester 
and London somewhat slightingly. But I did 
not form any hasty opinions from what happened 
to catch my eye. Afterwards, in the oaks and 
elms of Windsor Park, in the elms of Cambridge 
and Oxford and Salisbury, in the lindens of 
Stratford, in the various noble trees, including 



290 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

the cedar of Lebanon, in which Tennyson very 
justly felt a pride as their owner, I saw enough 
to make me glad that I had not uttered any 
rash generalizations on the strength of my first 
glance. The most interesting comparison I 
made was between the New England and the 
Old England elms. It is not necessary to cross 
the ocean to do this, as we have both varieties 
growing side by side in our parks, — on Boston 
Common, for instance. It is wonderful to note 
how people will lie about big trees. There 
must be as many as a dozen trees, each of which 
calls itself the " largest elm in New England." 
In my younger days, when I never travelled 
without a measuring-tape in my pocket, it 
amused me to see how meek one of the great 
swajTsrerino: elms would look when it saw the 
fatal measure begin to unreel itself. It seemed 
to me that the leaves actually trembled as the 
inexorable band encircled the trunk in the small- 
est place it could find^ which is the only safe 
rule. The English elm (^Ulmus campestris) 
as we see it in Boston comes out a little earlier 
perhaps, than our own, but the difference is 
slight. It holds its leaves long after our elms 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 291 

are bare. It grows upward, with abundant dark 
foliage, while ours spreads, sometimes a hundred 
and twenty feet, and often droops like a weep- 
ing willow. The English elm looks like a much 
more robust tree than ours, yet they tell me it is 
very fragile, and that its limbs are constantly 
breaking off in high winds, just as happens 
with our native elms. Ours is not a very long- 
lived tree ; between two and three hundred 
years is, I think, the longest life that can be 
hoped for it. Since I have heard of the fragil- 
ity of the English elm, which is the fatal fault 
of our own, I have questioned whether it can 
claim a greater longevity than ours. There is a 
hint of a typical difference in the American and 
the Englishman which I have long recognized 
in the two elms as compared to each other. It 
may be fanciful, but I have thought that the 
compactness and robustness about the English 
elm, which are replaced by the long, tapering 
limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach 
of our own, might find a certain parallelism in 
the people, especially the females of the two 
countries. 

I saw no horse-chestnut trees equal to those I 



292 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

remember in Salem, and especially to one in 
Rockport, which is the largest and finest I have 
ever seen ; no vi^illows like those I pass in my 
daily drives. 

On the other hand, I think I never looked 
upon a Lombardy poplar equal to one I saw in 
Cambridge, England. This tree seems to flour- 
ish in England much more than with us. 

I do not remember any remarkable beeches, 
though there are some very famous ones, espe- 
cially the Burnham beeches. 

No apple-trees I saw in England compare with 
one next my own door, and there are many oth- 
ers as fine in the neighborhood. 

I have spoken of the pleasure I had in seeing 
by the roadside primroses, cowslips, and daisies. 
Dandelions, buttercups, hawkweed, looked much 
as ours do at home. Wild roses also grew at 
the roadside, — smaller and paler, I thought, 
than ours. 

I cannot make a chapter like the famous one 
on Iceland, from my own limited observation : 
There are no snakes in England, I can say 
that I found two small caterpillars on my over- 
coat, in coming from Lord Tennyson's grounds. 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS, 293 

If they had stayed on his premises, they might 
perhaps have developed into " purple emperors," 
or spread "the tiger moth's deep damasked 
wings " before the enraptured eyes of the noble 
poet. These two caterpillars and a few house- 
flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, 
of the native fauna of England, except a few 
birds, — rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the 
larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose ; for 
I lost sight of them almost immediately. I 
neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my 
great regret. They had been singing at Ox- 
ford a short time before my visit to that place. 
The only song I heard was that which I have 
mentioned, the double note of the cuckoo. 

England is the paradise of horses. They are 
bred, fed, trained, groomed, housed, cared for, in 
a way to remind one of the Houyhnhnms, and 
strikingly contrasting with the conditions of life 
among the wretched classes whose existence is 
hardly more tolerable than that of those quasi- 
human beings under whose name it pleased the 
fierce satirist to degrade humanity. The horses 
that are driven in the hansoms of London are 
the best I have seen in any public conveyance. 



29i OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I cannot say as much of those in the four-wheel- 
ers. 

Broad streets, sometimes, as in Bond Street, 
with narrow sidewalks ; islands for refuge in 
the middle of many of them ; deep areas ; lofty 
houses ; high walls ; plants in the windows ; 
frequent open spaces ; policemen at near inter- 
vals, always polite in my experience, — such are 
my recollections of the quarter I most fre- 
quented. 

Are the English taller, stouter, lustier, rud- 
dier, healthier, than our New England people ? 
If I gave my impression, I should say that they 
are. Among the wealthier class, tall, athletic- 
looking men and stately, well-developed women 
are more common, I am compelled to think, than 
with us. I met in company at different times 
five gentlemen, each of whom would be conspicu- 
ous in any crowd for his stature and proportions. 
We could match their proportions, however, in 
the persons of well-known Bostonians. To see 
how it was with other classes, I walked in the 
Strand one Sunday, and noted carefully the men 
and women I met. I was surprised to see how 
many of both sexes were of low stature. I 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 295 

counted in the course o£ a few minutes' walk no 
less than twenty of these little people. I set 
this experience against the other. Neither is 
convincing. The anthropologists will settle the 
question of man in the Old and in the New 
World before many decades have passed. 

In walking the fashionable streets of London 
one can hardly fail to be struck with the well- 
dressed look of gentlemen of all ages. The 
special point in which the Londoner excels all 
other citizens I am conversant with is the hat. 
I have not forgotten Beranger's 

'* Quoifjue leurs chapeaux soient hien laids 
*** ***! moi, j'aime les Anglais ; '* 

but in spite of it I believe in the English hat as 
the best thing of its ugly kind. As for the 
Englishman's feeling with reference to it, a for- 
eigner might be pardoned for thinking it was 
his fetich, a North American Indian for looking 
at it as taking the place of his own medicine- 
bag. It is a common thing for the Englishman 
to say his prayers into it, as he sits down in his 
pew. Can it be that this imparts a religious 
character to the article ? However this may be, 



296 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

the true Londoner's bat is cared for as reveren- 
tially as a High-Churcli altar. Far off its com- 
ing shines. I was always impressed by the fact 
that even with us a well-bred gentleman in re- 
duced circumstances never forgets to keep his 
beaver well brushed, and I remember that long 
ago I spoke of the hat as the ultimum moriens 
of what we used to call gentility, — the last 
thing to perish in the decay of a gentleman's 
outfit. His hat is as sacred to an Englishman 
as his beard to a Mussulman. 

In looking at the churches and the monuments 
which I saw in London and elsewhere in Ensr- 
land, certain resemblances, comparisons, paral- 
lels, contrasts, and suggestions obtruded them- 
selves upon my consciousness. We have one 
steeple in Boston which to my eyes seems abso- 
lutely perfect : that of the Central Church, at 
the corner of Newbury and Berkeley streets. 
Its resemblance to the spire of Salisbury had al- 
ways struck me. On mentioning this to the late 
Mr. Richardson, the very distinguished archi- 
tect, he said to me that he thought it more 
nearly like that of the Cathedral of Chartres. 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 297 

One of our best living architects agreed with me 
as to its similarity to that of Salisbury. It does 
not copy either exactly, but, if it had twice its 
actual dimensions, would compare well with the 
best of the two, if one is better than the other. 
Saint-Martin's-in-the-Fields made me feel as if I 
were in Boston. Our Arlington Street Church 
copies it pretty closely, but Mr. Oilman left out 
the columns. I could not admire the Nelson 
Column, nor that which lends monumental dis- 
tinction to the Duke of York. After Trajan's 
and that of the Place Vendome, each of which 
is a permanent and precious historical record, 
accounting sufficiently for its existence, there 
is something very unsatisfactory in these nude 
cylinders. That to the Duke of York might 
well have the confession of the needy knife 
grinder as an inscription on its base. I confess 
in all honesty that I vastly prefer the monument 
commemorating the fire to either of them. 
That has a story to tell and tells it, — with a lie 
or two added, according to Pope, but it tells it 
in language and symbol. 

As for the kind of monument such as I see 
from my library window standing on the sum- 



298 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

mit of Bunker Hill, and have recently seen for 
tlie first time at Washington, on a larger scale, I 
own that I think a built-up obelisk a poor affair 
as compared with an Egyptian monolith of the 
same form. It was a triumph of skill to quarry, 
to shape, to transport, to cover with expressive 
symbols, to erect, such a stone as that which has 
been transferred to the Thames Embankment, 
or that which now stands in Central Park, New 
York. Each of its four sides is a page of history, 
written so as to endure through scores of centu- 
ries. A built-up obelisk requires very little more 
than brute labor. A child can shape its model 
from a carrot or a parsnip, and set it up in minia- 
ture with blocks of loaf sugar. It teaches noth- 
ing, and the stranger must go to his guide-book to 
know what it is there for. I was led into many 
reflections by a sight of the Washington Monu- 
ment. I found that it was almost the same 
thing at a mile's distance as the Bunker Hill 
Monument at half a mile's distance ; and unless 
the eye had some means of measuring the space 
between itself and the stone shaft, one was 
about as good as the other. A mound like that 
of Marathon or that at Waterloo, a cairn, even 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 299 

a shaft of the most durable form and material, 
are fit memorials of the place where a great bat- 
tle was fought. They seem less appropriate as 
monuments to individuals. I doubt the dura- 
bility of these piecemeal obelisks, and when I 
think of that vast inverted pendulum vibrating 
in an earthquake, I am glad that I do not live 
in its shadow. The Washington Monument is 
more than a hundred feet higher than Salisbury 
steeple, but it does not look to me so high as 
that, because the mind has nothing to climb by. 
But the forming taste of the country revels in 
superlatives, and if we could only have the deep- 
est artesian well in the world sunk by the side 
of the tallest column in all creation, the admir- 
ing, not overcritical patriot would be happier 
than ever was the Athenian when he looked up 
at the newly erected Parthenon. 

I made a few miscellaneous observations 
which may be worth recording. One of these 
was the fact of the repetition of the types of men 
and women with which I was familiar at hoine. 
Every now and then I met a new acquaintance 
whom I felt that I had seen before. Presently 



800 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

I identified him with his double on the other 
side. I had found long ago that even among 
Frenchmen I often fell in with persons whose 
counterparts I had known in America. I began 
to feel as if Nature turned out a batch of human 
beings for every locality of any importance, very 
much as a workman makes a set of chessmen. 
If I had lived a little longer in London, I am 
confident that I should have met myself, as I 
did actually meet so many others who were du- 
plicates of those long known to me. 

I met Mr. Galton for a few moments, but I 
had no long conversation with him. If he 
should ask me to say how many faces I can vis- 
ually recall, I should have to own that there are 
very few such. The two pictures which I have 
already referred to, those of Erasmus and of Dr. 
Johnson, come up more distinctly before my 
mind's eye than almost any faces of the living. 
My mental retina has, I fear, lost much of its 
sensitiveness. Long and repeated exposure of 
an object of any kind, in a strong light, is 
necessary to fix its image. 

Among the gratifications that awaited me in 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 301 

England and Scotland was that of meeting many 
before unseen friends with whom I had been in 
correspondence. I have spoken of Mr. John 
Bellows. I should have been glad to meet Mr. 
William Smith, the Yorkshire antiquary, who 
has sent me many of his antiquarian and bio- 
graphical writings and publications. I do not 
think I saw Mr. David Gilmour, of Paisley, 
whose " Paisley Folk " and other writings have 
given me great pleasure. But I did have the 
satisfaction of meeting Professor Gairdner, of 
Glasgow, to whose writings my attention was first 
called by my revered instructor, the late Dr. 
James Jackson, and with whom I had occasion- 
ally corresponded. I ought to have met Dr. 
Martineau. I should have visited the Reverend 
Stopford Brooke, who could have told me much 
that I should have liked to hear of dear friends 
of mine, of whom he saw a great deal in their 
hours of trial. The Reverend Mr. Yoysey, whose 
fearless rationalism can hardly give him popu- 
larity among the conservative people I saw most 
of, paid me the compliment of calling, as he had 
often done of sending me his published papers. 
Now and then some less known correspondent 



302 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

would reveal himself or herself in bodily pre- 
sence. Let most authors beware of showing 
themselves to those who have idealized them, 
and let readers not be too anxious to see in the 
flesh those whom they have idealized. When I 
was a boy, I read Miss Edgeworth's " L'Amie 
Inconnue." I have learned to appreciate its 
meaning in later years by abundant experiences, 
and I have often felt unwilling to substitute my 
real for my imaginary presence. I will add 
here that I must have met a considerable num- 
ber of persons, in the crowd at our reception and 
elsewhere, whose names I failed to hear, and 
whom 1 consequently did not recognize as the 
authors of books I had read, or of letters I had 
received. The story of my experience with the 
lark accounts for a good deal of what seemed 
like negligence or forgetfulness, and which must 
be, not pardoned, but sighed over. 

I visited several of the well-known clubs, 
either by special invitation, or accompanied by 
a member. The Athenaeum was particularly at- 
tentive, but I was unable to avail myself of the 
privileges it laid freely open before me during 
my stay in London. Other clubs I looked in 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 303 

upon were : the Reform Club, where I had the 
pleasure of dining at a large party given by the 
very distinguished Dr. Morell Mackenzie ; the 
Kabelals, of which, as I before related, I have 
been long a member, and which was one of the 
first places where I dined ; the Saville ; the Sav- 
age ; the St. George's. I saw next to nothing 
of the proper club-life of London, but it seemed 
to me that the Athenaeum must be a very desir- 
able place of resort to the educated Londoner, 
and no doubt each of the many institutions of 
this kind with which London abounds has its 
special attractions. 

My obligations to my brethren of the medi- 
cal profession are too numerous to be mentioned 
in detail. Almost the first visit I paid was one 
to my old friend and fellow-student in Paris, Dr. 
Walter Hayle Walshe. After more than half a 
century's separation, two young friends, now old 
friends, must not expect to find each other just 
the same as when they parted. Dr. Walshe 
thought he should have known me ; my eyes are 
not so good as his, and I would not answer for 
them and for my memory. That he should have 
dedicated his recent original and ingenious work 



804 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

to me, before I had thought of visiting England, 
was a most gratifying circumstance. I have 
mentioned the hospitalities extended to me by 
various distinguished members of the medical 
profession, but I have not before referred to the 
readiness with which, on all occasions, when pro- 
fessional advice was needed, it was always given 
with more than willingness, rather as if it were 
a pleasure to give it. I could not have accepted 
such favors as I received had I not remembered 
that I, in my time, had given my services freely 
for the benefit of those of my own calling. If I 
refer to two names among many, it is for special 
reasons. Dr. Wilson Fox, the distinguished 
and widely known practitioner, who showed us 
great kindness, has since died, and this passing 
tribute is due to his memory. I have before 
spoken of the exceptional favor we owed to Dr. 
and Mrs. Priestley. It enabled us to leave 
London feeling that we had tried, at least, to 
show our grateful sense of all the attentions 
bestowed upon us. If there were any whom 
we overlooked, among the guests we wished to 
honor, all such accidental omissions will be par- 
doned, I feel sure, by those who know how great 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 305 

and bewildering is the pressure of social life in 
London. 

I was, no doubt, often more or less confused, 
in my perceptions, by the large number of per- 
sons whom I met in society. I found the din- 
ner-parties, as Mr. Lowell told me I should, very 
much like the same entertainments among my 
home acquaintances. I have not the gift of si- 
lence, and I am not a bad listener, yet I brought 
away next to nothing from dinner-parties where 
I had said and heard enough to fill out a maga- 
zine article. After I was introduced to a lady, 
the conversation frequently began somewhat in 
this way ; — 

*' It is a long time since you have been in this 
country, I believe ? " 

" It is a very long time : fifty years and 
more." 

" You find great changes in London, of course, 
I suppose ? " 

"Not so great as you might think. The 
Tower is where I left it. The Abbey is much 
as I remember it. Northumberland House with 
its lion is gone, but Charing Cross is in the same 
old place. My attention is drawn especially to 



306 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

the things which have not changed, — those 
which I remember." 

That stream was quickly dried up. Conversa- 
tion soon found other springs. I never knew the 
talk to get heated or noisy. Religion and poli- 
tics rarely came up, and never in any controver- 
sial way. The bitterest politician I met at table 
was a quadruped, — a lady's dog, — who re- 
fused a desirable morsel offered him in the name 
of Mr. Gladstone, but snapped up another in- 
stantly on being told that it came from Queen 
Victoria. I recall many pleasant and some de- 
lightful talks at the dinner-table ; one in particu- 
lar, with the most charming woman in England. 
I wonder if she remembers how very lovely and 
agreeable she was ? Possibly she may be able 
to identify herself. 

People, — the right kind of people, — meet at 
a dinner-party as two ships meet and pass each 
other at sea. They exchange a few signals ; 
ask each other's reckoning, where from, where 
bound ; perhaps one supplies the other with a 
little food or a few dainties ; then they part, to 
see each other no more. But one or both may 
remember the hour passed together all their 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 307 

days, just as I recollect our brief parley with the 
brig Economist, of Leith, from Sierra Leone, in 
mid ocean, in the spring of 1833. 

I am very far from despising the science of 
gastronomy, but if I wished to institute a compar- 
ison between the tables of England and America, 
I could not do it without eating my way 
through the four seasons. I will say that I did 
not think the bread from the bakers' shops was 
so good as our own. It was very generally 
tough and hard, and even the muffins were not 
always so tender and delicate as they ought to 
be. I got impatient one day, and sent out for 
some biscuits. They brought some very excel- 
lent ones, which we much preferred to the tough 
bread. They proved to be the so-called " sea- 
foam " biscuit from New York. The potatoes 
never came on the table looking like new-fallen 
snow, as we have them at home. We were sur- 
prised to find both mutton and beef overdone, 
according to our American taste. The French 
talk about the Briton's " hiftech saignant^^' but 
we never saw anything cooked so as to be, as we 
should say, " rare." The tart is national with 
the English, as the pie is national with us. I 



308 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

never saw on an English table that excellent 
substitute for both, called the Washington pie, 
in memory of him whom we honor as first in 
pies, as well as in war and in the hearts of his 
countrymen. 

The truth is that I gave very little thought to 
the things set before me, in the excitement of 
constantly changing agreeable companionship. 
I understand perfectly the feeling of the good 
liver in Punch, who suggests to the lady next 
him that their host has one of the best cooks in 
London, and that it might therefore be well to 
defer all conversation until they adjourned to the 
drawing-room. I preferred the conversation, 
and adjourned, indefinitely, the careful apprecia- 
tion of the menu. I think if I could devote a 
year to it, I might be able to make out a grad- 
uated scale of articles of food, taking a well- 
boiled fresh egg as the unit of gastronomic 
value, but I leave this scientific task to some 
future observer. 

The most remarkable piece of European 
handiwork I remember was the steel chair at 
Longford Castle. The most startling and 
frightful work of man I ever saw or expect to 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 309 

see was another specimen of work in steel, said 
to have been taken from one of the infernal 
chambers of the Spanish Inquisition. It was 
a complex mechanism, which grasped the body 
and the head of the heretic or other victim, and 
by means of many ingeniously arranged screws 
and levers was capable of pressing, stretching, 
piercing, rending, crushing, all the most sensitive 
portions of the human body, one at a time or 
many at once. The famous Virgin, v/hose em- 
brace drove a hundred knives into the body of 
the poor wretch she took in her arms, was an 
angel of mercy compared to this masterpiece of 
devilish enginery. 

Ingenuity is much better shown in contri- 
vances for making our daily life more comforta- 
ble. I was on the lookout for everything that 
promised to be a convenience. I carried out 
two things which seemed to be new to the Lon- 
doners : the Star Razor, which I have praised so 
freely, and still find equal to all my commenda- 
tions ; and the mucilage pencil, which is a very 
handy implement to keep on the writer's desk or 
table. I found a contrivance for protecting the 
hand in drawing corks, which all who are their 



310 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

own butlers will appreciate, and luminous match- 
boxes which really shine brightly in the dark, 
and that after a year's usage ; whereas one pro- 
fessing to shine by night, which I bought in 
Boston, is only visible by borrowed light. I 
wanted a very fine-grained hone, and inquired 
for it at a hardware store, where they kept 
everything in their line of the best quality. I 
brought away a very pretty but very small 
stone, for which I paid a large price. The stone 
was from Arkansas, and I need not have bought 
in London what would have been easily ob- 
tained at a dozen or more stores in Boston. It 
was a renewal of my experience with the sea- 
foam biscuit. " Know thyself " and the things 
about thee, and " Take the good the gods pro- 
vide thee," if thou wilt only keep thine eyes 
open, are two safe precepts. 

Who is there of English descent among us 
that does not feel with Cowper, 

*' England, with all thy faults, I love thee still " ? 

Our recently naturalized fellow-citizens, of a dif- 
ferent blood and different religion, must not sup- 
pose that we are going to forget our inborn love 
for the mother to whom we owe our being. 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, 811 

Protestant England and Protestant America are 
coming nearer and nearer to each other every 
year. The interchange of the two peoples is 
more and more frequent, and there are many 
reasons why it is likely to continue increasing. 

Hawthorne says in a letter to Longfellow, 
" Why don't you come over, being now a man 
of leisure and with nothing to keep you in Amer- 
ica? If I were in your position, I think I 
should make my home on this side of the water, 
— though always with an indefinite and never- 
to-be-executed intention to go back and die in 
my native land. America is a good land for 
young people, but not for those who are past 
their prime. ... A man of individuality and 
refinement can certainly live far more comforta- 
bly here — provided he has the means to live at 
all — than in New England. Be it owned, how- 
ever, that I sometimes feel a tug at my very 
heart-strings when I think of my old home and 
friends." This was written from Liverpool in 
1854. 

We must not forget that our fathers were ex- 
iles from their dearly loved native land, driven 
by causes which no longer exist. " Freedom to 



312 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

worship God " is found in England as fully as 
in America, in our day. In placing tlie Atlan- 
tic between themselves and the Old World civil- 
izations they made an enormous sacrifice. It is 
true that the wonderful advance of our people in 
all the arts and accomplishments which make 
life agreeable has transformed the wilderness 
into a home where men and women can live 
comfortably, elegantly, happily, if they are of 
contented disposition ; and without that they 
can be happy nowhere. What better provision 
can be made for a mortal man than such as our 
own Boston can ajfford its wealthy children ? A 
palace on Commonwealth Avenue or on Bea- 
con Street ; a country-place at Framingham or 
Lenox ; a seaside residence at Nahant, Beverly 
Farms, Newport, or Bar Harbor; a pew at 
Trinity or King's Chapel ; a tomb at Mount 
Auburn or Forest Hills ; with the prospect of a 
memorial stained window after his lamented de- 
mise, — is not this a pretty programme to offer 
a candidate for human existence ? 

Give him all these advantages, and he will 
still be longing to cross the water, to get back to 
that old home of his fathers, so delightful in 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 313 

itself, so infinitely desirable on account of its 
nearness to Paris, to Geneva, to Rome, to all 
that is most interesting in Europe. The less 
wealthy, less cultivated, less fastidious class of 
Americans are not so much haunted by these 
longings. But the convenience of living in the 
Old World is so great, and it is such a trial and 
such a risk to keep crossing the ocean, that it 
seems altogether likely that a considerable cur- 
rent of re-migration will gradually develop it- 
self among our people. 

Some find the climate of the other side of the 
Atlantic suits them better than their own. As 
the New England characteristics are gradually 
superseded by those of other races, other forms 
of belief, and other associations, the time may 
come when a New Englander will feel more as 
if he were among his own people in London 
than in one of our seaboard cities. The vast 
majority of our people love their country too 
well and are too proud of it to be willing to ex- 
patriate themselves. But going back to our old 
home, to find ourselves among the relatives from 
whom we have been separated for a few genera- 
tions, is not like transferring ourselves to a land 



314 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

where another language is spoken, and where 
there are no ties of blood and no common reli- 
gious or political traditions. I, for one, being 
myself as inveterately rooted an American of 
the Bostonian variety as ever saw himself mir- 
rored in the Frog Pond, hope that the exchanges 
of emigrants and re-migrants will be much more 
evenly balanced by and by than at present. I 
hope that more Englishmen like James Smithson 
will help to build up our scientific and literary 
institutions. 1 hope that more Americans like 
George Peabody will call down the blessings of 
the English people by noble benefactions to the 
cause of charity. It was with deep feelings of 
pride and gratitude that I looked upon the bust 
of Longfellow, holding its place among the mon- 
uments of England's greatest and best children. 
I see with equal pleasure and pride that one of 
our own large-hearted countrymen has honored 
the memory of three English poets, Milton, and 
Herbert, and Cowper, by the gift of two beau- 
tiful stained windows, and with still ampler mu- 
nificence is erecting a stately fountain in the 
birthplace of Shakespeare. Such acts as these 
make us feel more and more the truth of the 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 315 

generous sentiment which closes the ode of 
Washington AUston, "America to Great Bri- 
tain : " " We are one ! " 

I have tohl our story with the help of my 
daughter's diary, and often aided by her recol- 
lections. Having enjoyed so much, I am desi- 
rous that my countrymen and countrywomen 
should share my good fortune with me. I hesi- 
tated at first about printing names in full, but 
when I remembered that we received nothing 
but the most overflowing hospitality and the 
most considerate kindness from all we met, I 
felt sure that I could not offend by telling my 
readers who the friends were that made Eng- 
land a second home to us. If any one of them 
is disturbed by such reference as I have made 
to him or to her, I most sincerely apologize for 
the liberty I have taken. I am far more afraid 
that through sheer forgetfulness I have left un- 
mentioned many to whom I was and still remain 
under obligations. 

If I were asked what I think of people's trav- 
elling after the commonly accepted natural term 
of life is completed, I should say that everything 



816 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

depends on constitution and habit. The old 
soldier says, in speaking of crossing the Beresina, 
where the men had to work in the freezing 
stream constructing the bridges, " Faut du tem- 
perament pour cela ! " I often thought of this 
expression, in the damp and chilly weather 
which not rarely makes English people wish 
they were in Italy. I escaped unharmed from 
the windy gusts at Epsom and the nipping chill 
of the Kensington garden-party ; but if a score 
of my contemporaries had been there with me, 
there would not improbably have been a funeral 
or two within a week. If, however, the super- 
septuagenarian is used to exposures, if he is an 
old sportsman or an old officer not retired 
from active service, he may expect to elude the 
pneumonia which follows his footsteps when- 
ever he wanders far from his fireside. But to 
a person of well-advanced years coming from a 
counting-room, a library, or a studio, the risk is 
considerable, unless he is of hardy natural con- 
stitution ; any other will do well to remember, 
" Faut du temperament pour cela ! " 

Suppose there to be a reasonable chance that 
he will come home alive, what is the use of one's 



MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 317 

going to Europe after his senses have lost their 
acuteness, and his mind no longer retains its full 
measure of sensibilities and vigor ? I should 
say that the visit to Europe under those circum- 
stances was much the same thing as the petit 
verre, — the little glass of Chartreuse, or Ma- 
raschino, or Cura^oa, or, if you will, of plain 
Cognac, at the end of a long banquet. One has 
gone through many courses, which repose in the 
safe recesses of his economy. He has swallowed 
his coffee, and still there is a little corner left 
with its craving unappeased. Then comes the 
drop of liqueur, chasse-cafe, which is the last 
thing the stomach has a right to expect. It 
warms, it comforts, it exhales its benediction on 
all that has gone before. So the trip to Europe 
may not do much in the way of instructing the 
wearied and overloaded intelligence, but it gives 
it a fillip which makes it feel young again for a 
little while. 

Let not the too mature traveller think it will 
change any of his habits. It will interrupt his 
routine for a while, and then he will settle down 
into his former self, and be just what he was 
before. I brought home a pair of shoes I had 



318 OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. 

made in London ; they do not fit like those I 
had before I left, and I rarely wear them. It 
is just so with the new habits I formed and the 
old ones I left behind me. 

But am I not glad, for my own sake, that I 
went ? Certainly I have every reason to be, and 
I feel that the visit is likely to be a great source 
of happiness for my remaining days. But there 
is a higher source of satisfaction. If the kind- 
ness shown me strengthens the slenderest link 
that binds us in affection to that ancestral coun- 
try which is, and I trust will always be to her 
descendants, " dear Mother England," that alone 
justifies my record of it, and to think it is so is 
more than reward enough. If, in addition, this 
account of our summer experiences is a source of 
pleasure to many friends, and of pain to no one, 
as I trust will prove to be the fact, I hope I 
need never regret giving to the public the pages 
which are meant more especially for readers who 
have a personal interest in the writer. 



INDEX. 



NOTE TO THE INDEX. 

There are various ways of reading a book. A few diligent 
persons read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest every page, 
sentence, word, and syllable. Quick-witted students glance 
through a volume, and find in a few moments what it has 
which is likely to be of interest for them. Some run their 
eyes rapidly over the Index, when there is one, which is no 
more than every book worth printing is entitled to. Some are 
satisfied with the Table of Contents. Others find the Title- 
page as much as they want, and there are many books, the 
wallflowers of book-shops and libraries, which we are content 
to read by the lettering on their backs, without calling them 
out from their places. 

The following Index, made for me under the direction of 
my Publishers, frightened me, when I first looked at it, by its 
exhaustiveness and its extent. I struck out a few headings, 
altered a few others, and concluded to let it stand as a monu- 
ment of industry and fidelity. But I must say that so long a 
tail to so small a kite is almost without a precedent in my lit- 
erary experience. 

The class of readers, however, who depend upon the Index 
for all they wish to know about the contents of a volume will 
not complain of its length and minuteness of detail. I myself 
have nothing but gratitude to the literary laborer who under- 
took the tedious task of making it. 



INDEX. 



Afternoon tea, 38, 41 ; at Mr. Haw- 
eis's, G2 ; at Devonshire House, 
63 ; at Archdeacon Farrar'a, 94. 
Agassiz, 280. 
Alger, Rev. Mr., 285. 
AUchin, Dr., 88. 

AUston, Washington, ode of, 315. 

Alnwick Castle, 9. 

American recognized before he 
speaks, 198. 

Americans at first sight of English 
scenes, 78 ; their taste for super- 
latives, 299. 

Anglo-Saxon chronicle quoted, 100. 

Antiquary, Scott's, 173. 

Anxiety at sea, unavoidable, 22. 

Apple-trees, 292. 

Arabian Nights carpet wished for, 
244. 

Arago, 255. 

Arcadia, 189, 191. 

Archer, king of the jockeys, 54, GO. 

Argyll, Duke of, 77. 

Argument with certain class of minds 
a lever without a fulcrum, 2G3. 

Arlington Street Church, 297. 

Arnold House, 201. 

Asthma, 15-17 ; cure for, IG 

Athenaeum Club, 303. 

Aurania, the, 274, 276; entertain- 
ment on board, 277. 

Austrian ambassador, 77. 

Authors, a new generation of, 57, 58. 

Autobiography, 11, 279. 

Avon, the, 140, 151, 192. 

Bacon, Miss, insane attempt of, 145. 
Bacon, Roger, his study at Oxford, 

122. 
Barclay, Mr., 126, 128. 
Bamum, Mr., 139. 
Base-ball, relative importance of, 

142. 
Bath, 1G1-1G4 ; Grand Pump-Room 



Hotel, 161 ; old Roman baths, 
IGl ; shops in, for slender purties, 
1G2 ; spoken of by Macaulay, 163 ; 
number of visitors, 163; abbey 
church sculptures, 164. 
Beach, Dr., 278. 
Beeches, 292. 

BeUows, Mr. John, 61, 177, 301. 
Bemerton, 168 ; church, 193. 
Benjamin of Tudela, 279. 
Benson, Mrs., at Lambeth Palace, 

110. 
Beresina, old soldier's saying about, 

316. 
Berwick on Tweed, 9. 
Birthday cake, 277. 
Birth-year, dG. 
Blenheim, its Titians, 8. 
Boats, fearful possibilities suggested 

by, 23, 277. 
Bodleian Library, 122, 123. 
Book-shop, Quaritch's, 224, 225; 

feelings on entering, 226. 
Books, rare, 226; prices of, 227, 

228. 
Boston, brightness of, remarked by 
Dickens, 34 ; State House dome, 
57 ; blessed centre of New England 
life, 100 ; provisions for its wealthy 
children, 312. 
Boston Theatre, accident at, 46. 
Boteler, Dr., quoted about the straw- 
berry, 258. 
Boulogne, 246. 
Box, a valued daily companion, 19, 

24. 
Bradley, Dean, tea with, 44. 
Breakfast, least convenient time of 
visiting, 38 ; at St. John's College, 
Cambridge, 119; at York, 125; 
at Parisian cafe, 266. 
Briggs, Mr., adventures of, com- 
pared with Mr. Pickwick's, 248. 
Bright, Mr. John, 131, 133, 134. 



322 



INDEX. 



Brighton, 201-20G ; built for enjoy- 
ment, 202 ; South Downs, 203. 

British Museum, how not to see it, 
231 ; j:igin Marbles, 232 ; sculp- 
tures from Nineveh, 233 ; lesson 
learned from a visit to, 233 ; how 
to see it, 233, 234. 

Britons once looked on as enemies, 
282. 

Brooke, Rev. Stopford, 301. 

Brown, Professor Alexander Crum, 
12G. 

Brown, Dr. John, 127 ; liis sister, 
127. 

Browning, Robert, 41, 56, Gl, 103, 
131, 135 ; a vital element of Lon- 
don society, 84. 

Browning, Mr. Oscar, 118. 

Brummel, 247. 

Bryce, James, 82. 

Buncle, John, 279. 

Bunker Hill battle, ignorance con- 
cerning, 141. 

Bunyan, 285. 

Burns, 285. 

Butler, Lady Eleanor, 285. 

Calais, 10 ; all Sterne, 247. 

Cambridge, visit to, 108-110 ; rooms 
in Trinity, 108 ; relationship with, 
109 ; second visit, 113-120 ; degree 
of Doctor of Letters, 1 14 ; de- 
monstrative students, 115 ; cordial 
reception at, 11(J; extract from 
Latin speech, 115 ; leaves delight- 
ful impression, 1 17 ; the boats, 
117 ; the river, 117 ; library of 
Trinity College, 117 ; King's Col- 
lege chapel, 117,118; dinner at 
Vice-Chancellor's, 118 ; hospitali- 
ties, 118 ; breakfast at St. John's 
college, 119 ; verses from poem, 
120. 

Cambridge, New England, 109. 

Camperdown, Lady, G2. 

Canterbury, Arclibishop of, 110. 

Caricature, good, a work of genius, 
64. 

Caricatures in " Punch," 63, 64. 

Carlyle, 209-211, 214 ; his house at 
Chelsea, 208, 209, 214 ; on Cole- 
ridge in Life of Sterling, 213 ; his 
meddling with our anti-slavery 
conflict, 213 ; his wife, 214. 

Carriages, of friends, 41, 42 ; wait- 
ing for, after a party, 69. 

Catalogues, literature of, 224; 
Quaritch's, 227. 

Caterpillars, 292. 

Cavendish, Lady Edward, C3. 



Cedar of Lebanon, 290. 

Cellar, once the surface, 161. 

Cephalonia, the, 19. 

" Chambered Nautilus," 84. 

Changed conditions, 2-4. 

Channel, passage of, 248, 273. 

Charles the First, opening of his 
coffin, 147. 

Charles River not more real than 
the Avon, 201. 

Chester, 27, 28 ; daisies, 28 ; cathe- 
dral, 29. 

Cheyne, Sir John, 183. 

Cheyne Walk and Row at Chelsea, 
208. 

Chichester Cathedral, spire of, 180. 

Chinese punishment, 136. 

Church, what one brings away from, 
254. 

Clarendon Park, 168. 

Class, meeting of, 169. 

Claude Lorraine, 194 ; pictures at 
Longford Castle, 194. 

Clift, Mr. William, 6, 9. 

Cobbe, Miss Frances Power, 62, 84. 

Coleridge, Lord and Lady, 136. 

Coleridge, what he says of Johnson, 
212 ; his conversation as reported 
by Dibdin, 212 ; De Quincey's ad- 
miration of, 212 ; Carlyle's por- 
trait of, 213. 

Colonial Exhibition, 237. 

Comfort, provisions for, 20, 21. 

Company on board ship, 21. 

Complexions of English children, 
33. 

Compton, Lady William, 148, 150. 

Compton Wynyate, excursion to, 
148 ; a study for the antiquarian, 
148 ; its name, 149. 

Concert, 69, 70. 

Conversation, 305, 306. 

Courbet, 265. 

Courier-maid, 17. 

Cowper, 255, 285. 

Craigenputtock, Emerson at, 211. 

"Cranford," Mrs. Gaskell's, 163. 

" Crichton, the Admirable," 190. 

Cuckoo, heard at Windsor, 75 ; of the 
poets, 75 ; Wordsworth's, 78, 293. 

Cunningham, Dr. George, 120. 

Cuvier, 272. 

Daisies, 28, 29. 
Dalhousie, Lady, 50. 
D'Arblay, Madame, 135. 
Darwin, 66. 
Darwinism, 3. 
Dawkins, Mr. Boyd, 280. 
Day, a, of rich experience, 77. 



INDEX. 



323 



Deafness in right ear of sporting 
men, 88. 

Death-warrant of Charles First, 79. 

Degree at Cambridge, 115 ; at Edin- 
burgh, 127 ; at Oxford, 133, 134. 

Derby day, 8, 4G ; of year 1834, 48, 
49 ; Gladstone's impression of, 
47 ; Dore's exclamation, 47 ; the 
horses, 50 ; the race, 53, 54 ; rec- 
ollections, GO ; weather, 281!. 

Devizes, 285. 

Devonshire House, 63. 

Diary, 13 ; extracts from, 70, 71, 76 
86, 118, 135. ' ' ' 

Dictionary, French and English, 61. 

Difference in use of language, 219, 
220 ; of scale, 219. 

Digby, Sir Kenelm, 87 : his ancestor, 
87. 

Dinner, at Lady Harcourt's, 36 ; the 
full-blown flower of social life, 40 ; 
at American Minister's, 56, 76 ; 
Sir William Harcourt's, 64 ; Arcli- 
deacon Farrar's, 86 ; Literary 
Club, 94 ; at Mr. Lowell's, 100- 
102 ; Sir Henry Thompson's, 103 ; 
political matters not talked of, 
113 ; at Vice-Chancellor Jowett's, 
118, 136 ; with Dean of Sahsbury, 
185 ; dinner-parties like those at 
home, 305 ; conversation at, 305. 

Dinners in Paris, 267. 

Dixwell, John, 79 ; liis descendants, 
79. 

Dogmatists, three, 211. 

Dore, Gustave, 47, 54. 

Domesday Book, 99, 100. 

Dresser, Dr., 223. 

Drury Lane Theatre, 62, 111, 112. 

Dryden quoted, 6. 

Dudley House, 89. 

Du Maurier, 101. 

Duplicates met in London, 300. 

East Indian lady, 85 ; her children's 
salaam to the Princess Louise, 85. 

East winds, 59. 

Eaton Hall, 29 ; its vastness, 30 ; 
its stables, 31. 

Ecclefechan, 210. 

Eclipse, portrait of, 60. 

Economist, the brig, brief parley 
with, 307. 

Edgeworth, Miss, her " L'Amie In- 
connue," 302. 

Edinburgh, fascination of, 9, 10, 126 ; 
degree of LL. D., 127; speech, 
128 ; former rambles in, 129 ; Sal- 
isbury Crags, 129. 

EUicott, Bisliop and Mrs., 62. 



Elm, in grounds of Magdalen Col- 
lege, 123, 124 ; on Boston Com- 
mon, 123 ; at Springfield, 124. 

Elms, at Longfellow's house, 105 ; 
English, at Lowell's, 105 ; of New 
England, 123 ; of Old and New 
England, comparison of, 290, 291 ; 
not long-lived, 291 ; hint of a typ- 
ical dilference in the American 
and the Englishman, 291. 

Elstow, 285. 

Emerson, Mr., 15, 100, 192, 193, 211. 

England, fifty years ago, 1 ; first 
impressions of, 32, 33 ; climate in 
May and June, 59, 85, 287 ; loot- 
ing by William's " twenty thou- 
sand tliieves," 100 ; sympatliy of, 
with slave-holding States in the 
War of Secession, 282 ; soil of, 
287 ; fossils, 288 ; relics of differ- 
ent peoples, 288 ; a canipo santo. 
289. 

Englands, twenty different, 280. 

English, county houses, 177 ; fists, 
205; people compared witli New 
Englanders, 294 ; feeling for the 
hat, 295, 296; B^ranger's lines 
quoted, 295. 

Entertainments on first visit, five 
in number, 9. 

Epitaph, Ben Jonson's, 182, 183 ; at 
South Downs, 204. 

Epsom, Derby day at, 8, 46, 48, 49- 
55 ; special train, 51 ; grand stand, 
52 ; luncheon, 55 ; windy gusts at, 
59, 316. 

Erasmus, portrait of, by Hans Hol- 
bein, 195, 300. 

Europe, first visit to, 4-9; risk of 
the trip in advanced years, 316; 
benefits of visit to, 317. 

Exclusiveness has its conveniences, 
216. 

Exposure required to make images 
permanent, 154, 300. 

Falstaff quoted, 38. 

Farrar, Archdeacon, 79, 86; guide 
at Westminster Abbey, 89, 92 ; 
sermon, 110. 

Farringford, visit to Tennyson at, 
104. 

Fauna, the native, 293. 

Feeling between England and Amer- 
ica, 281, 282, 310, 311. 

" Field, The," quoted, 46, 47, 49. 

Fleet Street, 236. 

Flower, Mr. Charles E., 138, 143. 

Flower, Mrs. Cyril, 56, 84. 

Flower, Mr. Edgar, 144. 



824 



INDEX. 



Flower, Professor W. H., 102. 

Flowers, wild, 292. 

Flyinfr Childers, CO. 

Fog, 27(; ; whistle, 277, 

Food, 307, 308 ; graduated scale of, 
308. 

Forty days' fasting, stories of, 182. 

Foster, Birket, his pictures of Eng- 
lish landscape, 32. 

Fothergill, Dr. J. Milner, 240. 

Fothergill, Dr. John, Franklin's en- 
comium of, 240. 

Foucault's grand experiment, 252, 
253 

Fox, Dr. Wilson, 304. 

France, the, of Louis Philippe, 1 ; 
from Boulogne to Paris, unat- 
tractive, 247 ; our friend in hour 
of need, 272. 

Fruits, early, loss of, compensated, 
258, 259. 

Gairdner, Professor, 301. 

Galileo, in Cathedral of Pisa, 253. 

Galton, I'rancis, 300. 

Gambetta, Leon Michel, 257. 

Garden parties, formidable, 85. 

Garden party at Kensington Pal- 
ace, 84-86. 

Gifts, on leaving Boston, 19. 

Gilman, Mr. Arthur, 297. 

Gihnour, Mr. David, 301. 

Gilpin liked, in a forest landscape, 
the donkey better than the horse, 
93. 

Gladstone said to think himself too 
old to cross the ocean, 14, GG ; at 
Epsom races, 47 ; militai-y aspect 
at Lady Rosebery's, CG; speech 
on Irish question, 9G. 

Gladstone, Mrs., G5. 

Glasgow, 10. 

Gloucester and Bristol, Bishop of, 
81. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 235, 236, 248. 

Gorges, Sir Thomas, 184, 185 ; as- 
sociations with his name, 184. 

Goschen, Mr., 77. 

Gosse, Ednmnd, 80 ; at Cambridge, 
108. 

Govver, Lord Ronald, 80. 

Granville, Lady, 42; Lord, 47. 

Gray, Professor, 280. 

Great Malvern, 154, 156 ; ascent of 
the Beacon, 155. 

Grisi, 7. 

Grosvenor House, pictures at, 81. 

Gull, Sir William, 40. 

Hahnemann, 154, 263. 



Halford, Sir Henry, 147. 

Halle, John, 186. 

Hamilton, Lady Claude, 70. 

" Haousen " for houses, 244. 

Harcourt, Lady, 36, 41, 63, 274. 

Harcourt, Sir William, 64, 65; 
rooms at Cambridge, 108. 

Harford, Canon, sermon of, in 
Westminster Abbey, 44. 

Hartington, Lord, 63. 

Harvard College, 11, 109; the au- 
thor professor at, for thirty-five 
years, 11, 151. 

Hastings, battle of, 99. 

Hathaway, Anne, cottage of, 148, 199. 

Haweis, Rev. H. II., 16, 42, 62, 81. 

Hawthorn, in Windsor Park, 73, 74 ; 
love-tale under, 74. 

Hawthorne, letter to Longfellow, 
311. 

Hedges in place of rail fences and 
stone walls, 33. 

Heitland, Mr., poem at St. Jolm'e, 
Cambridge, 120. 

Herbert family, 182. 

Herbert, George, 168, 191-194 ; Life, 
by Izaak Walton, 193. 

Herbert, Gladys (Lady Lonsdale 
and Lady de Grey), 70. 

Herkomer, Hubert, 121. 

Herschel, Lord Chancellor, 56, 131. 

Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 96. 

Highlands, the, 10. 

Holland, Lady, 62 ; our guardian 
angel, 86. 

Holland, Sir Henry, 14. 

Holme Castle, 157 ; meaning of 
name, 157. 

Holmes, Mr., Queen's librarian, 225. 

Holmes, Rear Admiral Charles, 6. 

Home, remembrances of, 172, 173 ; 
safe arrival at, 278. 

Homes, of England, 177 ; few such 
in America, 178. 

Homesickness hereafter, 258. 

Homoeopathy, traces of, still sur- 
vive, 154. 

Horse-chestimt trees, 291. 

Horpe - subduer an honorable epi- 
thet, 31. 

Horses, at Eaton Hall, 31, 32; at 
Ep.som, 49, fjO, 53, 54 ; pictures of, 
8, 49, 60 ; of London, 293 ; Eng- 
land the Paradise of, 293. 

Houghton, Lord, 66, 88, 283. 

House of Commons, 95, 97, 98. 

Houses, wooden, a better kind of 
wigwam, 30. 

Howe, Mrs., her Bank of Benevo- 
lence, 263. 



INDEX. 



325 



Huldy and Zekle, 74. 

Hunt, Mr. Holnian, Gl. 

Hunting in couples, iuatructive, 231. 

Hyde Park, 215, 21(5. 

Hydrophobia, 2G2, 203. 

Iced water and ice-cream, Englisli 

notions about, 42. 
Imagination, less to work on in the 

New World, I'JU, 200. 
Impression, tlie first, never to be 

repeated, 34, 280. 
Invitations, 30, 88 ; iasned, 83, 275. 
Irving, Henry, at Lyceum Tlioatro, 

45. 
Irving's emotions on seeing Mr. 

Roscoe, 78. 
Itinerary, motive for, 281. 

Jackson, Dr. James, 301. 

J.imos, Henry, 101. 

Jap.aueso exhibition in Boston, 238. 

Jerusalem Cliamber, 44, 45. 

Johnson, Dr., quoted, 122 ; his 
h irsli opinions about Americans, 
211, 212; Coleridge's assertion 
concerning, 212 ; Boswell'a, 230 ; 
house in Bolt Court, 230. 

Jones, E. Burne, 101. 

Joutfroy, 254, 255, 257. 

Jowett, Dr., Vice-Chancellor of Ox- 
ford, 130, 130, 137. 

July Fourth remembered, 143. 

June Seventeenth, why memorable, 
114. 

Keelky's motor, drawings of, 42. 
Kensal Green Cemetery, 274. 
Kensington Palace, 84, 85, 287. 
Kidder, Bisliop and liis wife, 285. 
King George Third, 282. 
King William Fourth, 7. 
Knox, Dr. Robert, 9; his "Races 
of Men " quoted, 1)9. 

Ladies, old English, 101. 

Lambeth, 110. 

Land, first siglit of, 20. 

Lang, Mr., 101. 

Lansdowne House, 43. 

Lark, emotions on neither seeing 

nor lioaring, 175, 170, 293. 
" Last Leaf, The," 58. 
Latin speech at Cambridge quoted, 

115. 
Lawrence, Mr. Abbott, 210. 
Layard, Sir Henry, 41, 233. 
Lear quoted, 21. 
Lebrun, Charles, figures of, 04. 
Lechmere, Sir Edmund, 159. 



Lechmere, Judge Richard, his house 
in Cambridge (Mass.), 100. 

Leclimere's Point, now East Cam- 
bridge, 100. 

Leech, Jolm, compared with Dick- 
ens, 248. 

Lindens, 289. 

Listen, 8. 

Literary Club, 94. 

Liverpool, 20, 34 ; visitors, 275 ; 
models of sliips and boats, 270. 

Llangollen, Vale of, 285. 

Locker, Frederick, 94, 103, 104. 

Lombardy poplar, 292. 

London, 5, 0, 34-45 ; our home in, 
35 ; rouiKl of social engagements, 
30, 37, 84 ; graiul old lady, 39, 40, 
41 ; professional friends, 40 ; re- 
ceptions, 42, 43, 50, 05, 82 ; official 
receptions, 05, 07 ; dinners, 50, 
04, 7(), 80, 94, KJO, 103; parks, 
215, 210 ; social geography of, 
215; shops, 221, 222, 228; book 
stores, 224, 220; time necessary 
for study of, 237 ; a place of mys- 
teries, 241 ; the day's employ- 
ments, 243 ; common sights dra- 
matic, 244 ; no person knows it, 
245 ; return to, 273 ; the Monu- 
ment, 273 ; weatlier in, 287 ; gen- 
tlemen well dressed, 295; last 
visitor in, 274 ; clubs, 303. 

" London Morning Post " quoted, 49, 
50. 

Lonely feeling in the midst of a new 
generation of authors, 58. 

Longfellow in Westminster Abbey, 
90, 314. • 

Longford Castle, 185, 194 ; remem- 
brances of, 194, 190 ; wonderful 
steel cliair, 190. 

Lome, Marquis of, 70, 77. 

Louis, his name a dim legend, 250. 

Louis Philippe, 1, 240, 271. 

Louvre, Gallery of, 259, 200, 271. 

Lowell, James Russell, 100, 101, 131, 
280, 305. 

Luncheon, a convenient affair, 38 ; 
at Cambridge, 113 ; at Oxford, 
135. 

Luncheons, 41, 43, 55, 01, 02, 79, 81, 
84, 80. 

Lyceum Theatre, 45. 

Macahster, Professor Alexander 

and Mrs., 113, 118. 
Macalister, Dr. Donald, 113, 118, 

119. 
Mackenzie, Dr. Morell, 303. 
Magdalen College, Oxford, 123; 



326 



INDEX. 



great elm, 124 ; Addison's favorite 

walk, 124. 
Malveni, abbey church of, 159. 
Man a sportiu" animal, 8. 
Manners, 52, 53. 
Marathon, mound at, 298. 
Martineau, Dr., 301. 
Matches, 222, 223 ; boxes, 310. 
Mathews, 8. 

May, the English, 55, 59, 
McLane, minister, 249. 
Medlar-tree, 120. 
Memorials of places, 299. 
Memories, old, the pleasing task of 

reviving, 250, 257. 
Merritt, Mrs., 40. 
Michael, Grand Duke of Russia, 

70. 
Microscope, 251. 
Mildmay, Mrs., 41. 
Millais, Sir John, 86. 
Miller, Hugh, 288. 
Milton, quoted, 74 ; gift in memory 

of, 314. 
Mirandola, 190. 
Mompesson, Rev. Mr. and wife, 

284. 
Monoliths, Egyptian, 298. 
Monument, by wretched widow, 

158 ; commemorating the great 

fire in London, 273, 274 ; to Duke 

of York, 297 ; to Nelson, 297 ; of 

Bunker Hill, 298 ; at Washington, 

298, 299. 
Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield, 41. 
Mliller, Professor Max, 121, 136. 
Mustard, boards advertising, 286. 

Names, magic of, 122. 

Napoleon, tomb of, 265, 266 ; Bar- 
bier's bitter satire on, 265. 

National Gallery, confused impres- 
sions from, 231 . 

Nature, a caricaturist, 64 ; does not 
care to mend old shoes, 281 ; fond 
of trios, 211. 

Nevins, Dr., 26. 

New England, old houses in, 28 ; 
landscape, 33 ; geological objects, 
288 ; Indian relics, 288. 

New Englander at home in London, 
313. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, engraving of, 
110. 

New York, arrival at, 277. 

Nightingale, Mr., 176, 177. 

Nobleman, seclusion and subter- 
ranean palace of, 241. 

Northampton, Marquis of, 148. 

Norton, Mr., 280, 283. 



Oak at Beverly, Mass., 73. 

Oaks, in park at Windsor, 72 ; and 
elms, 289. 

Obelisk, of Luxor, 2, 209 ; built up 
obeliisks, 298. 

Objects of visits, 4, 18. 

O'Byrne, the Irish giant, 102, 103. 

Ocean, solitude of, 22. 

Old civilizations, deeply buried, 161. 

Oliphant, Mr., 101. 

Orchids, pink, 71. 

Ormonde, winner of the Derby, 50, 
53, 54 ; picture of, 60. 

Osgood, Mr. James R., 242. 

Oxford, visit to, 120-125 ; Bodleian 
Library, 123 ; trees in grounds of 
Magdalen, 123, 124 ; second visit 
to, 130-137 ; degree conferred by, 
133, 134 ; academic dress, 132 ; 
luncheon at All Souls, 135. 

Paganini, the English, 7 ; the real, 
8. 

Paget, Minnie Stevens, 70. 

Paget, Sir James, 40, 02. 

Palaces, marble, are artificial cav- 
erns, 30. 

Palgrave, Mr., 79. 

Pantheon, 252. 

Papers, these, for whom written, 57, 
58, 279, 280, 318. 

Paris, 2, 14, 247-272; lodgings in 
house undergoing renovations, 
248 ; in the dead season, dull and 
torpid, 248, 270, 271 ; Place Ven- 
dSme, 248, 264; visit to former 
haunts, 250, 251, 254; Oaf 6 Pro- 
cope and its frequenters, 254-257 ; 
pictures in the Louvre remem- 
bered. 200 ; Museum of the H8tel 
Chmy, 200; Notre Dame, 201; 
seen in life's morning and in its 
twilight, 200, 207 ; restaurants, 
207 ; Palais Royal shops, 208 ; 
bridges, 268 ; three objects always 
to be met on the Pont Neuf , 268 ; 
Champs Elysees, 2G9 ; the Bois de 
Boulogne, 269, 270 ; Place de la 
Concorde, 269 ; Tuileries, ruins of, 
271. 

Parliament Houses, visit to, 79. 

Parr, Thomas, 14. 

Pascal, 255. 

Passengers, 21. 

Pasteur, M., visit to, 261, 262; his 
patients, 264. 

Patti, 70. 

Peabody, George, 314. 

Peel, Mr., speaker of the House, 
79. 



INDEX. 



327 



Pembroke, Earl of, 191. 

Pepys, 273. 

Pfeififer, Mrs., Gl. 

Phelps, Mr. , American Minister, 42, 
51, 56, 76. 

Phelps, Mrs., 77, 86. 

Phi Beta Kappa ribbons, 132. 

Philomathean Society, baiujuet, 276. 

Picture of lady by Sir Josluia, 12'J. 

Pictures at Blenheim, 8 ; Grosvenor 
House, 81 ; in Paris, 260. 

Pierce, Ruth, 285. 

Pilgrimages, 284, 285. 

Piron, 257. 

Plenipotentiary, winner of the Der- 
by, 8, 49, 60. 

Poems, unwritten, 151. 

Poetry associated with English scen- 
ery, 74, 75. 

Poets, and trees, 106 ; as readers of 
their own verses, 107 ; stained 
windows in memory of, 314. 

Poissardes and ptJtroleuses, 272. 

Poisson, 255. 

Policemen, 294. 

Politician, the bitterest, met, 306. 

Pollock, Mrs., 36. 

Ponce de Leon, fountain of, 257. 

Ponsonby, Miss, 285. 

Pope quoted, 274. 

Porpoises, 22. 

Poultry Cross, 186. 

Priestley, Dr. and Mrs., 40, 43, 83, 
261, 304. 

Prince Albert "Victor, 51, 65. 

Prince Cliristian, 53, 13j. 

Prince of Wales, 51, 52, 70. 

Princes, special accomplishment of, 
52. 

Princess Christian, 135. 

Princess Louise, 51, 76, 84. 

Princess of Wiiles, 51, 70 ; her al- 
bum, 84. 

Pugin, 186. 

"Punch," 63, 64, 308. 

QuARiTCH, Mr., 224, 225; extracts 
from his catalogues, 227, 228. 

Queen's birthday, 64. 

Queenstown, 26. 

Question suggested, by presence of 
a great surgeon, 152 ; by a fine 
work of art, 240. 

Rabelais, 195; club, 88, 89, 303. 
Rabies humana, a Parisian distem- 
per, 264. 
Radnor, Earl of, 185. 
Raphael, disinterment of, 146. 
Rathbone, Mr., 26, 31. 



Readers, a new generation of, 57. 

Reception, crowd at, 67 ; of June 
3d, 82. 

Recognition, three grades of, illus- 
trated by a supposed meeting of 
philosophical instruments, 217, 
218. 

Reform club, 303. 

Richardson, Mr., 290. 

Riedesel, Baroness, 160. 

Riffelberg, Mark Twain's ascent of, 
150. 

Ritchie, Mrs., 61. 

Rosebery, Lady, 64, 67, 68-71. 

Rosebery, Lord, 43, 50. 

Rothschild, Lvdy, 56, 69. 

Roubiliac's monument to Mrs. 
Nightingale, 183. 

Royal Academy exhibition, 231. 

Royal College of Surgeons, 102. 

Roze, Marie, in " Carmen," 111. 

Rubinstein, 84. 

Ruskin, John, 138, 194, 199, 283. 

Russell, Mr., 20, 275. 

Russian ambassador, 97. 

Saint Martins-in-the- Fields, 297. 

Salem ViUage, 199. 

Salisbury, 165-201; Cathedral, 165", 
106, 107, 181, 185, 197,201 ; Close, 
165, 166, 172, 185, 187; epitaph 
on native of, 168 ; spire, 178-181, 
200; momunents, 181, 184; for- 
merly unhealthy, 186; memories 
of week in, 200, 201. 

Sarum, 108, 170, 187, 188. 

Saturday Club, 2, 94. 

Savonarola, subject of poem heard 
at Oxford, 134, 135. 

Saxon race trodden down by the 
Norman, 100. 

Schliemann, 233. 

Schoolmistresses, 63. 

Scotland, 9, 130 ; psalmody of, 130. 

Stances, 263. 

Sears, Mr. Montgomery, 274. 

Secretary, 3(5, 37. 

Selborne, 159, 284. 

Sewall, Mr., 26, 275. 

Shakespeare, cuckoo of, 75 ; house 
at Stratford, 139, 199 ; memorial 
buildings, 143 ; new epithets for, 
144 ; why remains of, not dis- 
turbed, 145, 146. 

Shaving made easy, 24, 25. 

Shelley quoted, 27. 

Shenstone, epigriim of, 105. 

Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, 169. 

Shop-windows, 221, 222, 268. 

Sibyl, letter of, to the Queen, 43. 



328 



INDEX. 



Sidney, Sir Philip, 189, 190 ; portrait 

of, rj'2. 

Skeleton of Irish giant, 103. 

Smalley, Mr. G. W., G8, 101. 

Smith, Mrs., 5<). 

Sniitli, Mr. and Mrs. Goldwin, 202. 

Smith, Mr. Soden, 239. 

Smith, Sydney, quoted, 81, 102, 

Smith, Mr. William, 301. 

Smithson, Mr. Janies, 314. 

South Downs, mutton, 203 ; clergy- 
man, 203 ; church, 204. 

South Kensington Museum, 238, 
231) ; column of Trajan, 239 ; shrine 
of female saint, 239. 

Speech, demanded by students, 116, 
128 ; Gladstone's, 9G. 

Stafford House, 80. 

Stanley, Dean, 283. 

Staidey, Hon. Lyulpli, 62. 

Stanley, Lady, 02. 

Stanley, Mr., 9. 

Star razor, 25, 309. 

Steel, chair at Longford castle, 196, 
308; work in, from Spanish In- 
quisition, 309. 

Steeple of Central Church, Boston, 
296, 297. 

Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 101. 

Sterling Castle, Links of Forth 
from, 9. 

Sterne, 10, 247. 

Stokes, Professor, 113. 

Stonehenge, l(i8-17r>; "The Broken 
Circle," ](;9-172; literature of, 
173; mechanical problem, 174, 
175. 

St. Paul's, monuments, 230 ; dome, 
230. 

Strasbourg, statue of, 209. 

Stratford-on-Avon, 9, 90; visit to, 
138-147; children at, 140, 141; 
Church of Holy Trinity, 143; 
bridge, 144 ; charnel-house, 145 ; 
a week at, 153; hot days at, 287 ; 
reminiscence claiming precedence, 
151 ; question suggested by pre- 
sence of a great surgeon, 152. 

Strawberry, the, 258. 

Supper, at Foreign Office, 71 ; at 
Drury Lane Theatre, 111. 

Surgery, extraordinary success in, 
151, 152. 

Sutherland, Duke of, 81. 

Swanwick, Mrs. Anna, 61. 

Swinburne, Mr., 213. 

Tadema, Alma, 101. 
Tait, Lawson, 151-153. 
Tea, 38, 42, 103. 



Teachers, outgrown, 251. 

Telescope, Uer.schel's, 8. 

Temple, the, 234, 235; crusaders' 
monuments, 235. 

Tenniel, 101. 

Tennyson, Lord, 66 ; visit to, 103- 
108. 

Tennyson, Lady, 104. 

Tennyson, Mr. and Mrs. Hallam, 
104, 108. 

Terry, Ellen, 45. 

Tewkesbury, excursion to, 156 ; ab- 
bey churcli, 157, 180 ; old houses, 
157. 

Thackeray, story quoted, 52. 

Thompson, Rev. Wm. Hcpworth, 
Master of Trinity, 109, 110. 

Thompson, Sir Henry, 103. 

Titles, sound of, pleasant, 184, 185. 

Tower, the, 0, 229. 

Townsend, Mr., 101. 

Travellers of advanced years, 316, 
317. 

Trees, 33, 159, 289-292; soothing 
companionship of, 105, 100 ; Ten- 
nyson's, 290. 

Trios, nature fond of, 211. 

Turkish ambassador, 55. 

Tussaud, Madame, 273. 

Tyndall, Mr., 2, 86. 

Types, repetition of, 299, 300. 

Umbrella in London and in Paris, 

287. 

Underwood, F. H., Consul at Glas- 
gow, 128. 

University towns, the, not com- 
pared, i24. 

Vaccination, 263, 

Vauglian, Mr. Petty, 6, 9. 

Vaughan, Mrs., 44. 

Vauxhall Gardens, 7. 

Venus of Milo, 271. 

Verses, 120, l(i9, 170, 171, 172, 242. 

Victor Hugo, 285. 

Voltaire, 195, 2.57. 

Voyage, 5, 16, 20r26. 

Voysey, Rev. Mr., 301. 

Wallop, Lady Camilla, 131. 
Walpole, Horace, quoted, 51. 
Walsho, Dr. Walter Hayle, 240, 303. 
War, of 1812, 282 ; of secession, 282. 
Warwick, 9. 

Waterhouse, Dr. Benjamin, 240. 
Waterloo, mound at, 298. 
Watt and Watts, 242. 
Webb, Col., owner of Newstcad Ab- 
bey, 86. 



INDEX. 



329 



"Wellington on battle of Waterloo, 

83. 
Wells Cathedral, 285, 
Westbury, white horse on hillside, 

1G4. 
Westminster Abbey, 6, 44; Poets' 

Corner, 89 ; overcrowded, 91 ; 

visit of two hours, 9'2 ; holes for 

playing marbles, 9'2, 93; life in 

and about, 93. 
Westminster, Duke of, 31, 47. 
White of Selborne, 159, 284. 
Wliite, Sir W. A., 114. 
Wliittier, favorite tree of, at Dan- 

vers, 104. 
Wiglit, Isle of, 103, 105, 108. 
Wilde, Oscar, and wife, 42. 
Willett, Mr. Henry, 2G, 71, 137, 138, 

285. 
Willows, 292. 
Wilson, Sir Erasmus, 273. 
Wilton, 1G8; pictures, 188; sculp- 



tures, 189; maidens, daisies, and 
primroses, 189 ; predominant 
memory, 189. 

Windsor, 8, 71 ; the castle, 72 ; the 
park, 73. 

Whithrop, Mr., 50. 

Wolseley, Lord, (IG. 

Wolverton, Lord, 47. 

Women do not know their contem- 
poraries, GG. 

Wordsworth, 76, 78, 285. 

Wreck of the Medusa, 23. 

Wright, Mr. Aldis, 131. 

Wriglit, Professor, 113. 

Wyman, Dr. Jeftries, 280. 

Year 1809, birth year of Gladstone, 

Tennyson, Darwin, GG. 
York, Archbisliop of, 81 ; breakfast 

at, 125 ; cathedral, 9, 125. 
Yorksliire, 9. 
Young, Dr. Thomas, 2. 



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